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Class. 
Book. 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSn^ 



LONDON 

AN 

INTIMATE PICTURE 



By HENRY JAMES FORMA N 

IN THE FOOTPRINTS OF HEINE 
THE IDEAL ITALIAN TOUR 
LONDON— AN INTIMATE PICTURE 




Horseguard at Entrance to Whitehall 



LONDON 

AN 
INTIMATE PICTURE 



BY 
HENRY JAMES FORMAN 

AUTHOR OF 
" THE IDEAL ITALIAN TOUR, " ETC. 




NEW YORK 

McBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY 

1913 



^"^ 



y 



^<( 



Copyright, 1913, by 
McBeide, Nast & Co. 



Published, November, 1913 



©CI,A357790 



TO 

FILSON YOUNG 



COXTEXTS 



I 

II 
III 

IV 
V 

VI 

VII 

VIII 

IX 

X 

XI 

XII 



The Lure of Loxdox 

The Atmosphere of London . 

Trafalgar Square and the Strand . 

A Walk in Pall Mall and Piccadilly 

Fleet Street and the Temple . 

From St. Paul's to Charter House . 

The City: Some Milton, Shakespeare 
and Dickens Land 



The To"vver 

Whitehall and Westminster 
Galleries and Pictures 
Here and There 
The London of Homes . 



PAGE 

1 

7 
14 
36 
58 

77 

95 
117 
127 
151 
171 
185 



THE ILLUSTRATIONS 

Horseguard at Entrance to Whitehall . Frontispiece 

Thames Embankment and Cleopatra's Needle . . 2, 

Trafalgar Square 16 

Waterloo Bridge^ showing entrance to subway . . 24 

St. Clement Danes Church 32 

Piccadilly Circus 40 

St. Mary le Strand 60 

Queen Anne Statue, before St. Paul's .... 78 

Sentry at Buckingham Palace 86 

Fishing in the Green Park 98 

St. Saviour's Church 112 

On Tower Bridge 120 

Westminster Bridge, showing " Big Ben " . . .134 

One of Landseer's Lions and the National Gallery . 154 

The British Museum 172 

Thomas Carlyle Statue on Chelsea Embankment . 194 



LONDON 

AN 

INTIMATE PICTURE 



London: An Intimate Picture 



THE LURE OF LONDON 

TO those of us whose tongue is English, Lon- 
don is the most romantic spot on earth. 
I am aware of the sweep of such a gen- 
eralization. You may love your Italy and warmth 
and sunlight, and you may look upon Florence, 
Venice, Sorrento, Monte Carlo, as spots created 
for bliss terrestrial. It is my own case! You 
may even know something of what is spoken of as 
The Call of the East. Gloomy days of fog and 
rain may thrust before you irresistibly the mirage 
of gleaming white houses screened by palmetto and 
orange trees, semi-tropical verdure of a freshness 
that wrings your very heart with longing for them. 
Or you may have a taste for the clear, dry air and 
snows of the North. Yet to me, at all events, 
nothing is comparable to the romance of London. 
I have lived there and merely visited, absented my- 
self for years at a time, and still the call of Lon- 
don is stronger than any other call, and ultimately, 

[I] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

regardless of the initial direction, London is the 
crowning stage of every European journey, if not 
its end. 

Upon the reasons for that fact a good deal of 
philosophy has been expended, but mostly in vain. 
An English writer in the Daily Mail sums it up 
that " we want to be where our friends are, where 
our interests are, where one can live most vividly 
and with keenest zest.'* Patently inapplicable is 
such a view to the thousands upon thousands of us 
who are not Londoners or even Englishmen. Our 
friends are not there, nor any of our material in- 
terests. We have no stake in London, and the 
hotel porter may be our sole acquaintance. Yet 
so far as concerns the zest, most of us, strangers 
and aliens though we may be, can undertake to 
prove our title against many a Londoner. Why? 

For a hundred reasons, not one of which will 
bear close examination, or any rational analysis. 
There are the fog and the soot, and the rain and 
the leaden skies, but there is also a certain whim- 
sical, classic, transcendental charm that defies re- 
duction to words. Whistler to a certain extent 
conveyed it in his etchings, but only to the merest 
shadow. It may lie in the tortuous streets, or in 
the quaintness of their names ; in the look of Traf- 
algar Square or in the accent of your cabman ; in 
the gray-black aspect of the Law Courts, the Na- 
tional Gallerv, or the Government buildings, that 

[2 ] 



THE LURE OF LONDON 



seem to have risen from the sea, dripping still, or 
possibly in the Embankment Gardens. To one 
man the attraction lay in going nightly to the pit 
of a theater, and to another, a teetotaler, in pass- 
ing his days within the American Bar of the Savoy 
Hotel ! 

" At all times," observes Ford Madox HuefFer, 
" London is calling ; it calls in the middle of our 
work; it calls at odd moments, like the fever of 
spring that stirs each year in the blood. It 
seems," he adds, " to offer romantically, not streets 
paved with gold but streets filled with leisure, 
streets where we shall saunter, things for the eye 
to rest on in a gray and glamourous light, books to 
read, men to be idle with, women to love." One 
cannot but be dubious upon some of these points, 
and as to streets paved with gold, we visitors, if 
anyone, supply the paving material. But there is 
no manner of doubt as to the call, nor yet the 
charm, exquisite and indefinable, of the gray and 
glamourous light. 

No visitor, for example, doubts at first sight that 
the vast Gothic pile of the Law Courts is at least 
five centuries old, that long before Shakespeare or 
Dr. Johnson it stood there at the top of the Strand, 
a guardian of the Fleet Street frontier, somber, 
massive, dun-colored, a witness to the power and 
firmness of English justice. Yet the building was 
only begun in 1874, and occupied some eight years 

[3] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

later. But the fogs and the rains have made it 
" gray and glamourous," and with all respect to the 
Royal Academy, the rains and the fogs are the best 
artists in England. That, too, is part of London's 
lure. 

Subtly and indescribably thrilling is it to the 
wayfarer from overseas, or even from the Provinces, 
to find reminders of Dickens in Fleet Street, a remi- 
niscence of Dr. Johnson at the Cheshire Cheese and 
the memory of Tennyson hovering over " The 
Cock," where Will Waterproof wrote his lyrical 
monologue; where, in the words of even the present 
head waiter, no longer plump, they still " do you 
very well," in the matter of a joint or a cut of beef. 
You may find yourself wandering in darkest Soho, 
in search of Chianti, or a foreign book, and passing 
unawares the house in Frith Street where Mozart 
lodged (No. 51) or where Hazlitt died (No. 6), or 
you may be looking for a French restaurant in Ger- 
rard Street, only to stumble upon an ancient home 
of the poet Dryden (at 43) or (at 37) of Edmund 
Burke. Yet, a step away, is Shaftesbury Avenue, a 
raging, bustling theatrical district, not unlike 
Broadway, New York, or the Paris Boulevards, 
where few passers doubtless think upon Hazlitt, re- 
member Dryden, or even the philosopher of the sub- 
lime and beautiful. 

And not so long ago, while wandering about 
Campden Hill in quest of quarters for the winter, 

[4] 



THE LURE OF LONDON 



the present writer suddenly espied a tablet gleaming 
upon a fine old house richly, luxuriously set in a 
garden of which the gates chanced to be open. A 
plumber was working leisurely upon some water 
pipes and an air of delightful summer idleness hung 
about those silent precincts. 

"What does that tablet signify?" I paused to 
ask the plumber near the gate. 

" Eoh," said he, " that's where Lord Macaulay — 
'im as was the 'istorian — lived an' died in 1859. 
This 'ere is 'Oily Lodge ! " That also seemed a part 
of the lure of London. 

To the Englishman, of course, the significance of 
London is multiplied a thousandfold. It is the cap- 
ital of his country, the center of his creeds, political, 
religious, social and even economic — in these days 
when all of us must be economically baptized. The 
Anti-Socialist Society is spread out in the luxurious 
rooms in Victoria Street, the Fabian Society rules 
powerful in Clement's Inn, and even at the National 
Liberal Club history may be daily made. To the 
fashionable London is society ; to the studious, the 
British and other museums ; to the gay, a music 
hall ; to the rich, a market-place ; and to the empty 
it takes the place of a soul. Those of us who ar- 
rive from overseas look perhaps chiefly for glimpses 
of the old; the Englishman, however, beyond a doubt 
comes to seek the new, the topmost degree of pres- 
ent day civilization. And that is a notable feature 

[5] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

of London. Whatever the French may say of Paris, 
London is certainly the most complete, as well as the 
largest city of the globe. A disillusionizing resi- 
dence in Paris has convinced me that I could be 
quite happy never again to see the modern Athens, 
as they call it ; but it would mean exile to be de- 
barred the rest of life from London. 

Comparisons are said to be always odious, but 
surely it cannot be reprehensible to warn those who 
look forward to a sojourn in Paris that they are 
certain to be disappointed ; that there is no comfort 
there, except for the very rich ; that there is no 
longer any courtesy, if ever it has been there ; that 
a society has actually been formed for the purpose 
of promoting better manners among the constantly 
coarsening population, and that even every-day hon- 
esty is dwindling to the vanishing point. Of Lon- 
don none of these things may be said with justice, 
and that is why a sojourn in London is so much 
richer in returns than one in Paris. In short, the 
lure of Paris is the result largely of a belief in ster- 
eotyped phrases, whereas the lure of London is a 
substantial actuality. 



[6] 



II 

THE ATMOSPHERE OF I. O N D O N 

TO speak of the " atmosphere " of a place has 
come to be tantamount to slang, and there are 
those who will tell you irritably that you can 
all but eat the atmosphere of London. Putting aside, 
however, the purely pictorial cities of the world, like 
Florence or Venice, London is to me the most " atmos- 
pheric " of them all. New York is obviously too new 
for comparison and Paris is too self-conscious in 
its beauty; as for Berlin, it might have been built 
by the police! But London is unconscious, and 
that is a great point in its greatness. The best of 
London, from the visitor's point of view, may be in 
an open space, free to all the winds of heaven, or 
tucked away in a nook that only a cabman can find. 
For to many of us, if not to all, Nelson's column 
in Trafalgar Square is no more interesting than, 
say, the little house at the bottom of Craven Street 
where Heine lived in 1827, or the Carlyle house in 
that brief thoroughfare, Cheyne Row, or his statue 
in Cheyne Walk. There is one pleasant dwelling in 
St. James's Square (Number 10) that has held as 
tenants three prime ministers of England — Pitt, 

[7] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

Lord Derby and Gladstone — to say nothing of 
Lady Blessington ; and so sleepy a region as Onslow 
Square contains a home of Thackeray. The Lord 
Mayor is gorgeous at the Mansion House in the 
heart of the city, whereas the Premier is hidden 
away in the gloomy little alley that is Downing 
Street ; and the site of Sir Thomas More's garden 
where that luxurious prince, Henry VIII, often 
lolled as a guest, is now occupied by a series of model 
tenements built by the borough of Chelsea ! That 
is London. It is not that these things are more ro- 
mantic than, let us say, the Isle of St. Louis in 
Paris, but simply that they mean more to us of 
Anglo Saxon rearing. 

The charm of tradition, however, is far from be- 
ing the only species of London charm. Whistler, 
it is said, was the first to discover the " mj^sterious 
and fugitive " beauty of the town and, through the 
fog, saw in every chimney a towering campanile. 
But it is impossible to think that Whistler was alone 
in his discovery. On any partially clear day you 
may walk along the Chelsea Embankment from 
More's Garden and be not precisely flooded (London 
beauty Is not of the flooding kind), but steadily 
permeated by a delicate picture composed of ele- 
ments no more choice than the Thames, a few low- 
lying barges In mid-stream and a fringe of shadowy 
trees marking the edge of Battersea Park beyond. 
The mist from the muddy waters of the river and 

[8] 



THE ATMOSPHERE OF LONDON 

the blue haze clinging about those trees transform 
the scene into a kind of mirage, captivating to the 
eye, fascinating to the imagination, an altogether 
strange and beautiful vision. Yet beyond the park 
lies nothing more alluring than the drab, Harlem- 
like region of Battersea — though somewhere under 
its chimney-pots dwells Mr. John Burns, the Labor 
member of the Cabinet, dreaming, no doubt, of the 
next time when he should sleep at Windsor Castle, 
the guest of his Sovereign. That, too, is London ! 
It must be owned that this " atmosphere " is a 
fleeting, nameless thing, and does not vibrate upon all 
occasions or to all eyes alike. You may wander into 
the Temple and see nothing but the hurrying law- 
yers and their clerks, garnishing the gray picture 
with their monotonous silk hats, or you may per- 
ceive a hidden subtle romance incomparable to that 
of any other spot on earth. I have myself strolled 
there in both moods. Or, guide-book in hand, you 
may toil up a narrow stairway to Prince Henry's 
Room, at 17 Fleet Street, to see a certain Jacobean 
ceiling and remain to refresh yourself at the Tem- 
ple tea-rooms on the floor above, an altogether de- 
lectable spot, rich in toasted scones and delicious 
fruit salad, unmentioned in Baedeker, though per- 
haps as interesting as the ceiling. A number of 
those same Temple lawyers and sundry journalists 
gather there of an afternoon, and their talk, which 
vou cannot help overhearing, brings you nearer to 

[9] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

England than what Is left of Temple Bar in the 
street below. And the other day I was struck by 
the advertisement of a music hall in the Strand an- 
nouncing a set of " motion-pictures " depicting 
Dante's " Inferno." " Beware of Cheap Imita- 
tions ! " read a sign under the garish arc lights, and 
to me that was as English as the Tower of London! 

But the charm of London is by no means concen- 
trated in Fleet Street, Westminster or Chelsea. 
Everywhere among the miles upon miles of middle- 
class streets, quiet, somber, or even forbidding, are 
scattered bits and corners that attract you like pic- 
tures hung upon blank walls. You cannot pass 
Buckingham Palace without smiling at the common- 
place ugliness of it, but you can stand in St. James's 
Street facing St. James's Palace with its clock, its 
dark-bright fa9ade, every time you pass it. All of 
Pall Mall gets its tone from that delightful old 
front, and its unmistakably English aspect speaks 
to the tourist as a dozen " Frenchified " Ritz or 
Carlton Hotels could never do. 

The town is filled with anomalies. Go from Pic- 
cadilly through Curzon Street toward the square 
gray palace that is the town house of the Duchess 
of Marlborough. A little to the south of that street 
you may stumble upon Shepherd's Market, one of 
those odd little backwaters in which London 
abounds. Any evening in the season you may see 
men in evening dress losing their way and straying 

[10] 



THE ATMOSPHERE OF LONDON 

into this bit of Dickens land enclosed by the most 
costly houses in Mayfair, standing upon ground 
priceless per square foot. Footmen, coachmen, but- 
lers, slip away from their grand surroundings to the 
bar of the Sun tavern, here to unbend and refresh 
themselves in their own congenial fashion. I have my- 
self lost my way in Shepherd's Market, and the man 
who directed me, probably a footman, seemed to 
have a perfect knowledge of every house in Mayfair. 
Or, take Edwardes Square in Kensington. It re- 
minds you of the mysterious room you have read 
about in some ancient house of fiction. Sometimes 
the room is there and sometimes it has vanished. 
Edwardes Square has similar properties. I have 
gone there by a sort of dead reckoning from Earl's 
Court Road, and at times I have found it, at other 
times not. It took practice to learn that by pass- 
ing through a narrow mews you arrived at one 
end of it. There is also a way from the Ken- 
sington High Street. It is beyond a doubt one of 
the most tranquil spots on earth, and for years I 
have had in my eye certain little houses there, one 
of which I mean to acquire before I die. Not even 
every cabman knows it, and, in any case, to know it 
and to be certain of arriving there are two quite 
different matters. There the author of " The Di- 
vine Fire " lives in a busy seclusion, and many an- 
other artist, to say nothing of Mr. Bonar Law, may 
be found in those bird haunted precincts. The local 

[11] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

patriotism is strong, and to be an Edwardes Squar- 
ite is to have an additional dignity, independent of 
the fact that you may be a great novelist or the 
leader of the Opposition. 

I am far from implying, however, that all of Lon- 
don's charm lies in her streets or in her squares. 
Certain personalities, as many of us Americans are 
particularly aware, make what is best in London 
for us. I for my part think it a pleasant experi- 
ence, and an exciting, to be on the spot when a new 
book appears by H. G. Wells, or when Bernard 
Shaw addresses an audience. Wells, after all, is 
simultaneously published in America, but not long 
ago, when I heard G. B. S. speak to a crowded Al- 
bert Hall on the need of legislation for a minimum 
of money in everybody's pocket, I realized one of 
the high privileges of living in London. 

" You may think," he said, with a grave mien and 
laughing eyes, " that I love the poor, but that is 
untrue. I hate the poor ! That is why I want to do 
away with them ! — " or words to that effect. 

And one day you may be hurrying by the Leices- 
ter Galleries and perceive the advertisement of an 
exhibition of caricatures by Max Beerbohm. To 
anyone with a sense of the comic such an exhibition 
is an event. The drollery of it, the daring, the good 
humor, make it unique in the annals of caricature, 
and all the visitors are laughing and chatting affec- 
tionately of " Max." Coffee houses are gone ; the 

[12] 



THE ATMOSPHERE OF LONDON 

old eighteenth century London will never return, 
and the coherency of life, when the phrase of a wit 
was repeated throughout the city before nightfall, 
is perished forever. Nevertheless London Is the one 
great city that still retains at least a fragment of 
such coherency, and though the newspaper has sup- 
planted the coffee house, there is still a wit here and 
there to brighten the massive, opulent gloom. 



[13] 



Ill 



TKAFALGAR SQUARE AND THE 
STRAND 

TRAFALGAR SQUARE is the most unmistak- 
ably English thing in London. You could 
not imagine it in any other country, though 
it is worthy of any country on earth. Exalted upon 
a column a hundred and forty-five feet in height 
stands the counterfeit presentment (about three 
times his normal dimensions) of the man who 
saved England from invasion by Napoleon and in- 
dubitable conquest. The uniformly successful ca- 
reers of a Marlborough or a Wellington seem tame 
compared with his, and yet he died " plain " Lord 
Nelson. There is a kind of pathos in his heroism 
which, combined with his greatness, sets his monu- 
ment apart from all other monuments. He seems to 
be gazing out upon the England he has saved, and 
upon Westminster in particular, saying, 

" Build your Dreadnoughts, but don't forget to 
build your men ! " 

Looking upon the hurrying throngs at this vast 
cross-roads which is Trafalgar Square, you cannot 
help feeling that the days of the Drakes and the 



TRAFALGAR SQUARE 



Nelsons are ended for England and, if you are a 
lover of England, that fact seems mournful to you. 
It may be an optical illusion to which foreigners are 
subject, and certainly, when you think of the vast 
empire now held by English arms you are inclined 
to doubt your judgment. But Nelson seems to 
dwarf the entire nation at present. All appear to 
be bent upon petty pursuits oblivious alike of Nel- 
son or Trafalgar, of Havelock or Lucknow, of Na- 
pier and Gordon, of all in this square. Yet the sail- 
ors of old were often taken by press-gangs, whereas 
to-day there are voluntary Territorials (though not 
enough). Of course there are still Lord Roberts 
and Lord Kitchener. But if you look upon Eng- 
land with fresh eyes you cannot help feeling that she 
has forgotten her greatness. She needs all man- 
ner of artificial stimulants, dramas like *' An Eng- 
lishman's Home " and " Drake " to stir her patriot- 
ism, and the stature of her men seems small for so 
great a race. England may still expect every man 
to do his duty, but every man does not look as if he 
were fully able. The new filial zeal of the domin- 
ions, coming forward with their gifts of ships, is the 
first intimation of a rebirth for England, and Traf- 
algar Square, one would think, should serve Eng- 
land's mothers as the straked rods of the Patriarch 
Jacob served the dams of Laban's flocks. 

The three great hotels extending downward on 
Northumberland Avenue to the Embankment are 

[15] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

alone enough to make Trafalgar Square a rallying 
point for the visitor. Morley's Hotel, the National 
Gallery and Charing Cross Station are additional 
magnets. One ought, I suppose, to put in a word 
concerning St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, as beautiful a 
church as any in London and nearly two centuries 
old. But say what one will, London is not a city of 
churches, or, at all events, few people make a habit 
of visiting churches here in a sight-seeing sense. 
So, if we mention that Nell Gwynne lies buried and 
Bacon was christened there, we may feel free to 
pass on — not however without getting the general 
impression of a harmony of greyness made up of 
the Gallery, St. Martin's and some of the surround- 
ing buildings. 

The Strand is surely one of the least beautiful 
thoroughfares in the world, and yet one of the most 
alluring. To many indeed, the Strand is London. 
Of course, the presence of three great hotels, the 
Cecil, the Savoy and the Strand Palace, give it a 
certain character. But the hotels are not the rea- 
son. Londoners fondly imagine it to be broad. 
Even that is a mistake. But a ceaseless throbbing 
vitality draws the sight-seer and the Londoner, the 
soldier returned from abroad, the sailor home from 
the sea, or the provincial re-visiting the glimpses 
of the electric lights. Baedeker, I believe, very 
properly calls the Strand the " main artery " of 
communication between the City and Westminster. 

[i6] 




Copyright hy Sterfo-Travel Co. 

Trafalgar Square, looking up St. Martin's Lane, showing 
St. Martin's in the Fields and the National Gallery to 
the left 



TRAFALGAR SQUARE 



It is an artery. And though one can remember 
nothing beautiful about it, one feels the sense of 
life here as in few spots of London. Haberdashers, 
jewelers, taverns, restaurants — of such is the 
kingdom of the Strand, but the stream of human 
life that flows down it day and night, day and night, 
seems to give those shops and eating-houses an im- 
portance that few of them possess in reality. Many 
indeed, are of a tawdriness a little surprising to the 
tourist, particularly to the American tourist. But 
behind each of them seems to lie condensed an an- 
cient history like a Platonic " Idea." Mere casual 
associations seem here to dwindle to unimportance. 
For instance it seems nothing that Benjamin 
Franklin lodged at 7 Craven Street, or Peter the 
Great at 15 Buckingham Street. Such accidents 
are the commonplaces of every old European city. 
But not long ago I chanced to be looking for 
some account of York Watergate, before which, 
when you are upon the Embankment, you cannot 
help pausing. It is a beautiful thing in itself, and 
a reminder of that hardly conceivable London when 
the Thames was a highway resembling the Grand 
Canal in Venice (though faintly), when richly dec- 
orated barges swept it, when the servants of fine 
gentlemen called " oars ! " precisely as now they 
whistle for a taxicab. The gate, at the foot of 
Buckingham Street, about two minutes from the 
Strand, now stands perhaps a hundred yards away 

[17] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

from the river, but once it formed the water steps 
of York House, and is said to have been built by 
Inigo Jones. Concerning York House itself I 
found that a volume, and a very readable one, might 
easily be written. 

Originally given by Queen Mary to the Arch- 
bishops of York, in exchange for that other palace 
that her father, the bluff Henry VIII, had taken 
from them, it remained for nearly a century their 
town house, though only one of them, Heath, ever 
lived there. One wonders whether even Bishops 
could be superstitious — about making use of any- 
thing that came from the hands of a Tudor ! The 
house was let to the Keepers of the Great Seal and 
Francis Bacon was born there during its occupation 
by his father. Sir Nicholas Bacon, who subsequently 
died there. Sir Francis himself hoped to die there, 
so dear was the house to him, and his letter to the 
University of Cambridge accompanying the Novum 
Organon is dated Ex Aedibus Eborac, 3 mo. October 
1620. One cannot help speculating, if he wrote 
Shakespeare's plays, whether it was there by the 
Thames that he wrote them. A Baconite might 
easily imagine Will Shakespeare, who must have 
been discreet as a conspirator, stealing across the 
Thames from Southwark to transact business with 
his " angel " and distinguished anonymous play- 
wright. At York House, too, the poor learned 
Lord Verulam (poor only in a moral sense) was 

[i8] 



TRAFALGAR SQUARE 



finally disgraced and thence the Great Seal was 
" fetched from " him. Later he craved permission 
to return to his beloved house for a fortnight, and 
he was promptly reminded of it when his fortnight 
was up. He was not allowed to die there, after all. 
It was subsequent to Bacon's expulsion that York 
House was acquired by King James I, the one pedant 
on a throne that has been remarkably free from 
anything even remotely resembling pedantry, for 
George Villiers, his favorite " Steenie," first Duke 
of Buckingham. Surely no stranger combination 
has ever existed in history than that pedantic mon- 
arch and that gorgeous beloved Duke of his, 
who rivaled continental kings in magnificence. He 
built upon the site of York House a new provisional 
house, not to live in, but " to make use of the rooms 
for the entertainment of foreign princes." For the 
sum of a hundred thousand florins he bought from 
the painter Rubens a collection of gems, antiques 
and paintings that included 19 Titians, 17 Tintor- 
ettos, 13 pictures by Paul Veronese, 3 by Raphael, 
3 by Leonardo da Vinci and 13 by Rubens himself! 
That was before the days of American competition 
for such things. At this period, too, the water- 
gate made its appearance. Less than a mile far- 
ther up the river on the same bank, where now are 
Bouverie and Tudor Streets, was Alsatia, that des- 
perate quarter of the town filled with thieves, cut- 
throats, ruffians of every description whom the po- 

[19] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 



lice dared not follow there. It offered a criminal 
securer sanctuary than any church. To-day Lord 
Northcliffe and others publish their newspapers 
there. But to return to York House, " Steenie " 
Villiers did not entertain his princes in it for long. 
He was assassinated in 1628, and later, after the 
unpleasantness between Charles I and Parliament, 
Cromwell gave the house to his own general, Fair- 
fax. Whereupon Buckingham's son, the second 
Duke, returned from abroad, married the daughter of 
General Fairfax and once again a Buckingham was 
owner of York House. Over this ducal son-in-law 
Cromwell and his general subsequently quarreled. 
Later the house was occupied by Ambassadors 
to th© Court of St. James, and Pepys, that elo- 
quent gossip, often went to walk in its gardens and 
to dwell in memory upon the splendors of the first 
Buckingham. There was nothing splendid about 
Pepys, but his own love of good living aroused his 
sympathies for the bygone magnificence of the place. 
To speak of " its gardens," seems droll to us now, 
as we look upon the dreary back of Charing Cross 
Station ; upon those narrow thoroughfares : Villiers, 
George, Duke and Buckingham Streets! The truth 
is, the Duke sold the property for £30,000 to a com- 
pany in 1672, who cut it up into those very streets, 
and the Watergate alone, deserted, with a locked 
iron door, a stranded, useless thing, stands as q, wit- 
ness to the vanished glory. Even the association 

[20] 



TRAFALGAR SQUARE 



of Evelyn and Steele with Vllllers Street is forgot- 
ten. Numerous, preoccupied, hurrying clerks and 
shop-girls move up and down that street between the 
Charing Cross Underground station and the Strand. 
For them York House, the Duke or Pepys might 
never have existed. 

Despite the lure of the Strand, it is always pleas- 
ant to avoid a piece of it, by going from Buckingham 
Street by way of John Street to Adelphi Terrace. 
That Terrace, built by four Scotch architects and 
brothers (hence Adelphi), Robert, John, James and 
William Adam, who have given this little ganglion 
of streets their names, is another of those anomalous 
spots that gives London charm. Though only a 
few yards from the Strand of a thousand 'busses, it 
is quiet as a church on week days, and the row of 
houses on the Terrace proper overlooking the river, 
dates without exception to the latter half of the 
eighteenth century. On the way up John Street, 
however, one must not forget the Little Theater, 
where dramatic history has been and is being made. 
Who that has seen Miss Lillah McCarthy, the clever 
and beautiful wife of Granville Barker, in " Fanny's 
First Play," will ever forget the experience.? The 
drollest, most trenchant, wittiest of plays, by the 
drollest, most mordant of twentieth century play- 
wrights, who can smite the shrewd conventional 
middle-class Briton, and have him join in the laugh. 
The piece was produced anonymously, but the name 

[21] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

of Bernard Shaw was writ so large upon every line 
of it, and drew nightly such eager audiences that it 
was deemed best to leave it " anonymous " even to 
this moment. Later another Shaw play was filling 
the Little Theater — " Captain Brassbound's Conver- 
sion," absurd as a Lewis Carroll nonsense tale and 
quite as amusing. And to think that once upon a 
time what is now the Little Theater was occupied by 
nothing more important than Coutts's Bank! 

From the top of John Street, turning a step to the 
right, past the Adelphi Hotel, you find yourself on 
the Terrace proper, and if you have not already for- 
gotten the Strand, you now forget it completely. 
You see at No. 4, which looks not a particle less 
black than No. 3, or number 5, a tablet commemo- 
rating the occupancy of the premises by one David 
Garrick, deceased in 1779. That intelligence shocks 
you strangely. So absolutely certain are you that 
the Terrace is unchanged that even the death of Sir 
Henry Irving must seem a remoter event than that 
of Garrick. You cannot but be startled at the 
thought that here he trod, in and out of this door- 
way, as though it might have been yesterday. A 
milk-boy was nevertheless delivering milk when last 
I saw it, and a coal-heaver was bending under the 
burden of his grimy sacks in total unconcern. I 
alone was taking any notice of the tablet, and even 
I hurried on, lest the others should mark me for a 
fool. 

[22] 



TRAFALGAR SQUARE 



At Nos. 6 and 7 is the home of the Savage Club 
which, as any Savage will tell you, is unique among 
clubs. Just as, in Goethe's language, the blood is 
quite a special juice, so the Savage is quite a special 
club. The king belongs to it ! Of course that 
does not mean that he haunts it nightly at five to 
drink cocktails with the journalists and actors who 
are its members, but he has been there, when he was 
Prince of Wales, even as every President visits the 
Gridiron at Washington. Certain it is that the 
Savages have entertained at their Saturday night 
dinners everybody who is anybody for many years 
past, and whatever talent a member may possess he 
must and does offer up eagerly for the pleasure of 
the members assembled. The actor recites, the 
singer warbles, the cartoonist draws his best carica- 
ture on the blackboard of the smoke-laden dining- 
room, and only witty people like Mr. Griffiths, the 
American Consul-General, are allowed to make 
speeches there. Otherwise, the Club is free from 
speeches, hence the great popularity of its house-din- 
ners. 

A few doors beyond the Savage (I will not say 
how many) dwells Bernard Shaw himself on this very 
Terrace in one of those black houses, illumined by 
perpetual lightning flashes. 

In one minute you may be back in the Strand, a 
prey to all the taxicabs in London, excepting those 
that are in Piccadilly. You pass the two vast 

[23] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 



hotels, the Cecil and Savoy, that hold half America 
in their bosoms and you may wander down the sloping 
Savoy Street to see the little chapel of the same 
name, all that is left of the ancient Savoy Palace, 
where John of Gaunt once lived and where Chaucer 
was probably married. It is useless to reconstruct 
here a palace built in 1245, of which not a stone is 
standing to-day, but the Savoy Mansions upon the 
site, frequently the home of actresses and artists 
(as well as others) would doubtless please John O* 
Gaunt on that account. For he was no ascetic, de- 
spite his name, and another of his pleasant retreats 
is now occupied by Sir Gilbert Parker at Homestall. 

The little chapel is truly beautiful. You have to 
enter it through a tiny graveyard, and the main 
door is now many feet below the surface, but within, 
if you have a taste for such things, is an atmosphere 
that only great age can give a church. That the 
taste for such things is rare now-a-days is proven by 
the fact that you will probably be alone in the build- 
ing, and as no one would turn on lights for a mere 
every-day visitor, you will feel rather than see the 
beauty of it. George Wither, a seventeenth-century 
poet, lies buried there, and it seems exactly the place 
for a poet's tomb. A fine memorial window to 
D'Oyly Carte recalls artists of a later vintage. 

Covent Garden is not improbably associated in the 
American mind entirely with opera, exactly as the 
Haymarket is with theaters. But although there is 

[24] 



TRAFALGAR SQUARE 



no hay in the haymarket, Covent Garden actually 
holds the produce of the world in respect of vege- 
tables and greens, only you cannot buy them there. 
Zola, who had a taste for themes like Le Ventre de 
Paris, would probably have embodied this wholesale 
market, had he lived in London, in a thrilling novel 
entitled " The Vegetarian Stomach of London." 
Shop-keepers, greengrocers from all over London, 
picturesque costers with their inimitable carts and 
toy donkeys, speaking a language peculiar to them- 
selves, traffic here daily in a world, a climate even 
of their own, all within a minute's walk of the crusa- 
der sculptured on the outer court of the Savoy 
Hotel! Hucksters, porters, shopmen and market 
women jostle one another busily and good-humor- 
edly, faces brownish-red with exposure emit strange 
sounds, the smell of fresh vegetables and decaying 
ones, rises to heaven, and yet this is the place of 
the fashionable opera, where Caruso sings and Melba ; 
where the King may listen to them and where the 
richest of South African and American millionaires 
nightly appear in the season among those ever pres- 
ent! 

And, another oddity: the surrounding streets 
reek of literary atmosphere and reminiscence. 
Thus, Southampton Street holds the offices of a 
variety of periodicals ; King Street contains that wit 
among journals, the Saturday Review, and Henri- 
etta Street teems with publishing houses, on the the- 

[25] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

ory, I suppose, that it is dangerous for letters to 
be too far removed from the food supply. King 
Street, too, was the first home of the Garrick Club 
established there in 1834 before moving (in 1862) 
to its present home in Garrick Street. Thackeray 
joined the club in '33 and became at once a leading 
spirit in the club. Quaintly enough, this club of 
actors and men of letters owns its own oyster-bed — 
an achievement beyond the reach of many a wealth- 
ier club. Fielding, the father of the English novel 
(as Richardson was its mother), once edited a Co- 
vent Garden Journal and later presided as magis- 
trate in the Bow Street police-court. In St. Paul's 
Church, Covent Garden (another of Inigo Jones's) 
were married the father and mother of the painter 
Turner and in Maiden Lane near by he was born 
in 1775. In the church lie buried the author of 
" Hudibras," Sir Peter Lely, and William Wycherly. 
On the other side of the market at the northeast 
corner of Bow and Russell Streets, stood Will's 
Coffee-house, that was to the last quarter of the 
seventeenth century literature what the Mermaid 
Tavern was to Shakespeare's day, and Charles and 
Mary Lamb lodged at 20 Russell Street in 1817. 

It is impossible to pass Will's over with a mere 
word. Dryden had his winter chair there by the 
fire and his summer chair out upon the balcony, and 
all the clever young men gathered about that chair 
to catch the sparks from his flame. Everyone made 

[26] 



TRAFALGAR SQUARE 



fun of the seriousness with which Will's took itself 
and its literary judgments, yet everyone was glad 
enough of approval. An old rhyme saith : 

To Will's I went, where Beau and Wit 

In mutual contemplation sit; 

But which were Wits and which were Beaus, 

The Devil sure's in him who knows. 

To make amends there, I saw Dryden. 

A Day's Ramble in Govent Garden, 1691. 

After Dryden's death, Addison carried the wits 
away in his train to Button's, across the way in Rus- 
sell Street. Button had been an old servant of Ad- 
dison, and Mr. Spectator loyally proceeded to make 
his fortune. 

But the fruit dealers and costers who swarm in 
the market of a Saturday morning, or, indeed, any 
morning, have not even an inkling of Dryden or 
Addison, nor yet of Will's or Button's. They think 
doubtless, if they think at all, that it has always 
been a fruit and vegetable market since London be- 
gan. Yet Covent Garden was originally written 
Convent Garden, and was in very truth the garden 
of the convent attached to the Abbey of Westmin- 
ster. And it was only in 1631 that the square was 
formed (from designs by Inigo Jones) at the ex- 
pense of the Earl of Bedford, who lived where is now 
Bedford Street, and in 1656 that a few stalls against 
the Earl's wall commenced the market that now fills 

[27] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

the square. The theater was not built until 1733 
and the present opera house on the site, not until 
1858. 

The Bow Street police-court is another feature 
among Covent Garden institutions. Fielding, the 
author of " Tom Jones " was perhaps the greatest 
of the magistrates who have sat here, and Hazlitt 
records seeing the son of the novelist, in his own turn 
a justice, sunning himself in St. James's Park after 
a day on the bench in Bow Street. No play on the 
London stage to-day (including even the non-pro- 
fessional stage) is comparable to the drama that un- 
rolls itself daily in the Bow Street court. I have sat 
there for days spell-bound, fascinated, listening to 
the cases, as they moved into the field of vision like 
slides under a microscope. No visitor to London, 
it would seem to me, could do better than to spend 
half a day in Bow Street. It presents the most in- 
timate of all the London pictures. Before you have 
seen it, the teeming population of the town, what 
with its strange customs and novel intonations, is 
a race of aliens. But see a portion of it for a morn- 
ing or two reviewed by Mr. Curtis Bennett, or Mr. 
Marsham,* and the deep unconscious solidarity of 
the human race with its cognate weakness and kinship 
in misfortune, comes home to you like a wise maxim, 
and you are veritably presented with the freedom of 
the city. The police court is the best observatory 

* Deceased since this was written. 
[28] 



TRAFALGAR SQUARE 



for what little remains of the London of Dickens. 
All these magistrates, Bennett, Marsham, Plowden 
and the rest are experts long practiced in adjudging 
human frailty, and to a packed courtroom they can 
give the intimacy of a family council. A London 
editor once asked the writer for an article upon the 
cruelty and abuse of power by these metropolitan 
police magistrates. 

I visited them all from Bow Street to Lambeth, 
from Marylebone to the Mansion House, and instead 
of burying Caesar could only praise him. But praise 
is not of universal interest, and the article was never 
written. 

Bow Street leads into Wellington Street and in 
Wellington Street is the Lyceum Theater, so long 
associated with the name of Henry Irving. To-day 
it is given over to melodrama, as is Drury Lane, a 
street or two away. Having never been inside either 
house, I can say nothing about them. 

Somerset House, one of those great gray, sea- 
bathed palaces distinctive of London, presents its 
western fafade to Wellington Street and to the traf- 
fic rolling across the Waterloo Bridge. There is 
nothing romantic concerning the present structure, 
excepting the wills and other public documents, 
every one of which, no doubt, possesses its own ro- 
mance. It was erected in 1786 as a government of- 
fice building and to-day it swarms with government 
clerks and solicitors' clerks absorbed in probate, 

[29] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

legacy duties, inland revenue, and so on. But once 
upon a time when it was really Somerset House, the 
one begun in 1549, in Edward the Sixth's reign, by 
the Protector Somerset, who was subsequently be- 
headed in the Tower, both Tudor and Stuart sover- 
eigns used it as a residence. James I and both the 
Charleses gave it as a home to their respective con- 
sorts, and Queen Elizabeth one day listened to an 
alchemist there who promised to transmute for her 
base metals into gold. Cornelius Noye was his 
name, and the account says that " he abused many." 

Crossing Wellington Street, however, I cannot 
pretend that it is the Strand side of Somerset House 
and King's College that most interests me. Baede- 
ker gives the exact measurements of the court and 
the name of the sculptor who made the statue of 
George III. But a certain bookseller's shop in the 
neighborhood is sure to attract your eye more 
swiftly than the other scenery, and if you come not 
away with a depleted purse, you are luckier than the 
present writer. 

The Gaiety Theater, suggesting young peeresses 
and flowing champagne, is across the way, standing 
between the Strand and Aldwych on a kind of sacred 
soil. Two or three peers have actually, in recent 
years, chosen their brides from the Gaiety chorus, 
but one may imagine a reception at Devonshire 
House even now as still more representative than this 
theater of British aristocracy. A Gaiety restau- 

[30] 



TRAFALGAR SQUARE 



rant that was here, filled with red silken lamp-shades 
and very good food, failed to pay, and to-day it is 
already forgotten in the Marconi Wireless Offices 
that occupy the premises. 

The breadth of the Strand, the openness of the 
Crescent of Aldwych and the sweep of the new Kings- 
way running into Holbom, give this region a spa- 
ciousness that seems strangely modern for London. 
In the Kingsway stand at least two great buildings 
erected by Americans — the Kodak Company's 
premises and Mr. Oscar Hammerstein's late opera 
house ; in Aldwych stands the Waldorf Hotel, which 
also has a familiar sound to American ears. It is 
only recently that all these things have come into 
being. A few years ago tliis was a crowded quarter 
and in the space that has gone to broaden the 
Strand, was Holywell Street, a famous thorough- 
fare given up to book shops trafficking mostly in 
books, — some unmentionable in polite society. That 
trade is now dispersed and nothing remains of Holy- 
well Street but the room it occupied. Modernity is 
at work even in London, and before long not a stone 
will stand in Airley. 

The two churches that stand at this point of 
the Strand, seemingly almost alike in appearance, 
are a phase of that unexpectedness that character- 
izes London. One of them you would imagine were 
enough, but although St. Clement Danes was al- 
ready in existence (built in 1681), St. Mary le 

[31] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

Strand was erected in front of it (by Gibbs) in 
1717. One reason for that was that anciently, so 
far back as 1147, a church was already standing on 
the spot, and no less a divine than Thomas a 
Becket was its rector. But Somerset, the Protec- 
tor, had pulled it down to make room for the house 
that even now bears liis name and, subsequently the 
Strand Maypole was erected here in 1661, after 
General Monk had succeeded in putting the Stuarts 
back on the throne, and joy was, so to speak, un- 
refined. With the coming of the first George of 
Hanover, St. Mary le Strand was incontinently re- 
built. 

Close behind is St. Clement Danes. Both 
churches stand full in the middle of the road, but 
one imagines them on a kind of oval, due to the om- 
nibuses curving round them to the left on the way 
to Fleet Street and to the right on the return jour- 
ney. St. Clement Danes is still somewhat of a fash- 
ionable church, though one hardly knows why. It 
was built by Christopher Wren, and Dr. Johnson 
was one of her pew-holders, but essentially it differs 
little from St. Mary's, a hundred yards distant. 
Both are gray-white and both have the aspect subtly 
typical of London churches. You simply could not 
imagine them elsewhere. Yet every now and again 
you read of a fashionable wedding in St. Clement 
Danes, but in St. Mary le Strand, I have never 
seen anyone on week days except charwomen at 

[32] 




St. Clement Danes Church. Erected by Sir Christopher 
Wren 



TRAFALGAR SQUARE 



work. A tablet to Dr. Johnson in St. Clement's 
records various of his virtues, and among those 
buried there are Thomas Otway, Joe Miller and, so 
it is said, Harold Harefoot, sprung from the loins 
of King Canute. To the west of the church is a 
statue of Gladstone by Hamo Thomycroft and to 
the east one of Johnson by Percy Fitzgerald. 

Clement's Inn, on the left of St. Mary le Strand, 
is merely a vast new building of offices and " resi- 
dential chambers," and were Master Shallow or 
Falstaff to revisit it now they would hardly recog- 
nize in the present structure the St. Clement's Inn 
of their roistering days. The Women's Social and 
Political Union has its offices here, and Mr. and Mrs. 
Pethick Lawrence their rooms. Justice Shallow 
would very justly be surprised. As for Shadaw, 
Mouldy, Wart and Feeble, those redoubtable re- 
cruits that Shallow oiFered to Falstaff against the 
wars, the Fabian Society, now housed in the self 
same Inn, has taught them Socialism and made them 
men. Mr. Bernard Shaw's voice rises ever like a 
fountain on their behalf, and nothing can stay their 
regeneration. 

A number of streets, Surrey, Norfolk, Arundel 
and Essex run down to the south of the Strand and 
all of them, in their names, commemorate houses of 
noblemen that once stood on their sites. They have, 
too, a variety of literary associations. But for the 
most part, they are now filled with buildings of 

[33] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

offices and have nothing alluring to exhibit. Essex 
Street, however, not being open to wheeled traffic, 
still preserves an eighteenth-century atmosphere. 
Two or three publishers have their offices here and 
the Essex Head is the sole flagrant representative 
of modernity. But even the Essex Head stands on 
the spot of " Sam's," an evening club founded by 
Dr. Johnson, where the fine for non-appearance was 
two pence. " Sam," like Button, was a former 
servant of his chief patron. Of course, even be- 
yond that Essex Street, like most London streets, 
has a history, if one had the space to trace it out. 
When the Earl of Essex was Queen Elizabeth's fa- 
vorite he lived at Essex House, which before that 
had been called Leicester House, when Leicester had 
lived there. Queen Bess, however, was a dangerous 
lady-love to have. When Essex fell out of her 
graces, he fell, so to speak, into jail. He resisted 
arrest (February, 1601) and Her Majesty had some 
artillery drawn up in front of his house. That 
argument proved irresistible and his lordship gave 
himself up and was lodged in the Tower. 

The day before these words were written I looked 
into Essex Street. Darkness was already falling 
and lights were blinking here and there and making 
bright the windows of the Essex Head. A boy of 
ten was endeavoring to control a huge barrel organ 
down the sloping street, and finally brought it to a 
triumphant pause before the illumined windows. 

[34] 



TRAFALGAR SQUARE 



His sister, a girl of perhaps fourteen, began to sing 
in a sweet childish treble to the tune of the organ, 
and the mother of the two children stood mournfully 
looking on. Elizabeth, her favorite, her cannon, 
were not half so real as this little English family of 
poor people grinding tunes out of the organ. 



[35] 



IV 



A WALK IN PALL MALL AND 
PICCADILLY 



THE natural way would doubtless be to continue 
from the Strand into Fleet Street and then on 
into the heart of the "City." But to the 
visitor the name of Piccadilly, though by no means 
so rich in literary association as Fleet Street, is 
second in importance only to the Strand — though 
perhaps I am reversing the order. The two to- 
gether make the visitor's London, and many an 
otherwise unimpeachable tourist has probably never 
stirred much beyond those two thoroughfares, un- 
less you count Pall Mall. And though Pall Mall 
must be counted, I cannot pretend enthusiasm re- 
garding it. Were it not for St. James's Palace, it 
would be positively gloomy. About Pall Mall the 
most remarkable thing is its name. It seems a 
rather silly name (derived from paille maille, a game 
resembling croquet) and yet it is associated in one's 
mind with grandeur. Thackeray is responsible for 
that, not a doubt. He always expected a scribbler 

[36] 



PALL MALL AND PICCADILLY 

to leave a duke's arm in Pall Mall to come and speak 
to a fellow scribbler, and ironically noted the fre- 
quency of the occurrence. That tradition of gran- 
deur, however, is slowly perishing in Pall Mall, and 
to-day you can distinguish neither scribbler nor 
duke, for both are members of the new Royal Auto- 
mobile Club. But the odds are that the author will 
take a taxi and the duke will walk; so you may be 
able to tell in that way. 

Nevertheless, Thackeray had reason for his im- 
plication. For if such tenants as Charles II, Nell 
Gwynne, and Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marl- 
borough, will not make a street grand, who will? 
And to-day it is still filled with palaces — Marl- 
borough House, the Automobile Club, the Carlton, 
Reform, Athenaeum Clubs — palaces every one of 
them. But of Marlborough House you see very lit- 
tle in Pall Mall, and clubs, though the word has 
come to denote sociability, give the street its chill 
effect of isolation. 

Much sentimentality and rhapsodizing have been 
indulged in concerning clubs. London is the home 
of them, and Pall Mall and St. James's Street, at 
right angles, form together the home within the 
home of the club. A club, we are accustomed to 
think, is a kind of paradise, more than a home, a 
men's heaven, and so on. But we know very well 
now that neither the best nor the wisest of mankind 
spend the bulk of their time in clubs. The idle, well- 

[37] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

dressed males you see in the windows do not impress 
you as the leaders of the nation, and particularly 
pitiful must be the case of the man who relies upon 
club society for his mental diversion. In few places 
can one be so lonely as in one of these phalanster- 
ies, and now and then you hear legends of a rule 
of silence. Vain legend and futile rule ! You have 
but to pass along the fronts of these Pall Mall 
temples, and all desire for speech is hushed within 
3'ou. Upon the broad, thickly carpeted staircase 
of one of them, it suddenly struck me on a certain 
evening, what a noble thing it would be to shout ! 
I suppose the roof would have fallen. But I lacked 
the courage, and the members present were saved. 
Of course, there are clubs and clubs. But those in 
Pall Mall are mostly of the first order, hoary with 
tradition, the Guards' Club (Number 70) dating 
back to 1813 and the Travellers' (Number 106) to 
1819. 

The Carlton and the Junior Carlton (Numbers 
94 and 30, respectively) are the very sanctuaries of 
conservatism, and one expects an atmosphere of 
silence about them. There is a theory that con- 
servative programmes are generally organized at 
the Carlton and that liberalism is equally active at 
the Reform Club (102). Perhaps that accounts 
for the dense air of mystery overhanging these clubs, 
politicians being notoriously secretive, and seldom 
saying anything. The Slarlborough Club, at 52, of 

[38] 



PALL MALL AND PICCADILLY 

which the Prince of Wales is a member, as well as 
the Army and Navy (36) and the United Service 
(116) are other conservative strongholds, though, 
of course, there is no political creed subscribed to. 
The Greek frieze round the walls of the Athenaeum 
(107) speaks for itself, stamping the club as a 
haunt of learning. Nearly every bishop is said to 
be a member of it, but it is by no means confined 
to bishops. Nevertheless Theodore Hook was wont 
to order his brandy there by the name of tea so as 
not to shock the divines, and Thackeray, who was 
constantly given to making fun of clubs and their 
members, passed every afternoon of the last week of 
his life within the walls of the Reform Club. 

Compared to these, the Royal Automobile Club 
(86) is a mere parvenu, as Its name would imply. 
Yet, as its name would also imply, it is the most 
luxurious of them all. Members of the others, no 
doubt, look askance upon the Persian pomp of this, 
the greatest (largest) club in the world — so called 
by members who have not seen certain of the clubs 
in New York and Chicago. And it certainly is a 
vast structure, not unlike a great American hotel, 
possessing all things that an automobilist could 
want, even to a Turkish bath. It puts into the 
shade everything on cither side of it, including 
Marlborough House and St. James's Palace. 

Time was, when Neil Gwynne, who lived at Num- 
ber 79, could converse across the garden wall with 

[39] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

her amiable patron, Charles II; and later the 
Duchess of Marlborough spoke of her *' neighbor 
George " at the palace, whom she quite over- 
shadowed, and my lord Duke of Marlborough, 
grown avaricious and imbecile in his old age, used 
to totter home alone rather than spend sixpence for 
a sedan chair. That was dangerous, for Pall Mall 
was then a kind of citified country lane. A thief, 
who snatched a silver tankard from the window of 
Dr. Sydenham, was lost " among the bushes in Bond 
Street," and even in Walpole's day a mail coach was 
robbed there at eight o'clock one evening. Now 
you might as well look for the Golden Fleece at the 
Guards' Club or for Homer at the Athenaeum as 
for bushes in Bond Street or in Pall Mall. For a 
long time, however, Pall Mall continued " shady " 
(I mean with trees), and Astley, the painter, who 
acquired Nos. 81 and 82 about 1760, built him a 
studio on the roof and called it his country house. 
In the west wing of this house Gainsborough died in 
1788, and there is a story that he sent for Joshua 
Reynolds, and, upon his arrival, exclaimed, " We 
are all going to heaven, and Van Dyke is of our 
number ! " and expired immediately after this an- 
nouncement. 

Dodslcy, the publisher of " Tristram Shandy," 
had a shop in Pall Mall (" Tully's Head"), though 
there is uncertainty about the number. In any 
case, Pope and Burke and Chesterfield were among 

[40] 




Copyright by Stereo- Tr,ivel Co. 



Piccadilly Circus 



PALL MALL AND PICCADILLY 

his patrons, and Johnson, Garrick and Goldsmith 
met there one winter evening in 1749 to discuss Tlie 
Rambler, a new publication. Among other literary 
associations of Pall Mall are Lockliart's house, 
number 25, where Sir Walter Scott visited him in 
1826-27. 

Marlborough House was built by Christopher 
Wren no earlier than 1710, but St. James's has 
been in existence " from time immemorial." That 
phrase means one thing in Rome or Jerusalem, and 
quite another in London. In any case, St. James's 
had long been a hospital for " leprous virgins," of 
all things, when Henry VIII saw and coveted the site 
for a palace, which he promptly ordered built, and 
there he dwelt for a brief space with Anne Boleyn. 

In 1817 Marlborough House was bought by the 
Crown and of late has been the official residence of 
the Prince of Wales, though at the moment it is 
the home of the Dowager Queen Alexandra. St. 
James's Palace is no longer the residence of the 
King, though now and then a levee is still held there. 
It is chiefly tenanted by court officials, and to pass- 
ers its ceremony of guard-mounting affords a daily 
spectacle. 

n. 

St. James's Street is a brighter thoroughfare 
than Pall Mall, but it too is under the dominance 
of clubs. With the exception of a few in Piccadilly, 

[41] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 



tlio dubs I lull .'Vio not in TmII Mall :ur in St. .l;vnirs's. 
In \hc cxi^hiccuih fonliuv llu-n- wms hvvc a fnHVo- 
l»ou.s«> i>f the sanu' nanu" nuMt> livt^ly than a <l»>7.on 
imuliMii chihs, antl Addison i;ivi"s a vlvul tli-si-riplion 
nf it in " Thr Spoiiator." 'Vhc fato of Tiations was 
daily dispiisod o\' hv llu- talkative ijjiMitliMnon ovor 
thoir ooiroc, lut'nn' tho days wIumi a disturhiui]^, naiii- 
ful silonrr was tlu' best oi' t^ooA form. Tlioro was 
also a Thatihod llouso 'ravorn, dating. j)cM-ha})s, to 
the days whon tht* U-jx-r hi>s}>ital >vas y<^t untouohod. 
1-ator, hoMivrr, Tiuior uiaitls of hoT\or ran across 
from tlio palaco to llu' tavern on private business of 
tlieir own, ami In the seventecn-hundreds, Johnson, 
Swift and other wits ^atluM-ed here for various pur- 
poses of soeiability. Hut the elubs have ilone away 
with all that, though some o( them extend far into 
the eighteenth century themselves. 

White's (No. .S7), the one with tiie bow window 
h>ng familiar to readers of tiction, is said to have 
reconis perfect from the year ITJ^^G. And Crock- 
ford's, at No. 50, where now stands the Devonshiro 
CMub (totally liarmless) was even too well known. 
jNlany a man lost all he possesscil at its gaming 
tables. At Hrooks's (Nik (>()) Fox would spend 
night after night with Wilkes, Fit'/patrick, Sheri- 
dan and other boiui iHMupanions drinking and pl.'vy- 
ing hi'Mvilv, ajul in tiie mi>rning he would refresh 
his miuil st>uie\vhere among the trees witli a ]nH'ket 
Horace, (liblion, tlu> t'.it historian of \\o\nc, was 

L4^J 



PALL MAf.L AND PICCADILLY 



ul.so a xri»(rilj(r }i«r<-, iiuil af. No. 71", wli'ff: now h\hihIh 
the ConHfTvutivf (^luh, \n- ulf,irnaf.f;ly di»ri (. January 
16, 1794-). Arui t.h«! MarqulH of St.ijnf;, it will he 
r'-calK-fJ, was HalfJ to liave won Iij'h rnarqui.Hate from 
I''f>x af, f.})'- f^arnln^ taM'-. Tliouf/fi aHHOciat'd witfi 
tJic nmiKH of the nation'^ ^r*at, the.se ehjh.s arf: nf>t 
n(;cesHttrJly eonnectcrJ with its ^reatnf;HH. 'ffif-re are 
ot})er.s of theHC rnonuHterieH in \.\i<- .stre(-t,, houk- inore 
roh>rle.sH, Home ]t-HH, tint I for one rannot rrrow K*nti- 
;n*ntal ahout thf-m. 

St.. .Jarrie.s'H Phice, running off' (tfiougfi not v<ry 
fur) to tfie Jeft hh you faefr PieearJilly, is a little 
aristoeratie haekwater not without literary assoeia- 
tion«. It was at No. 22 that Samuel Koprer?i, tfie 
hanker-po(;t, gave fii.s farnouH literary hreakfantu for 
so many years, owing to a eornhination of gifts 
which enahled him to afforrJ }>fjtf) tlic jioctry unrj tlie 
fireakfasts; and Jiyron onee liver] then*, thougli it 
was at No. 8 St. James's Street that he " woke up 
to find fjirnself famous." And I suppose one ought 
at least to mrmtion (Cleveland Itow and Stafford 
ifouse, the Dijke of Suth'-rland's great crf-am- 
colon;d town hous*- (now sold J, jjerhaps the finest 
residence in London. (j)ueen Victoria once remarked 
to the Duchess, wliom she was honoring with her 
presence : 

"I corne from my house to your palace" — a 
royal prerogative of speech, no douht, ff>r itucking- 
harn ]*ala^;e does not look like a house. 

[43] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 



Baedeker, I sec, calls all the clubs in Pall Mall 
" palatial," and they are palatial. But except for 
the frieze of the Athenaeum or the more show3' 
Renaissance style of the Automobile, you can barely 
remember the appearance of any of them once you 
have turned away from it. The truth is, the 
" palatial " style does not show off well in London. 
For Italian palaces you need an Italian sun ; Lon- 
don requires heavier forms of architecture, such as 
the Law Courts or St. Paul's Cathedral. 

Opposite St. James's Place is King Street, leading 
to St. James's Square, one of the most decorous of 
all the London squares. At the time of the late 
King Edward's funeral, I remember seeing royal 
carriages, with the scarlet royal livery of the coach- 
men, moving about its rectangular street, and 
guards were patrolling in front of certain of the 
houses as though the square were an adjunct of the 
Palace — which indeed it was. Certain royal 
guests were lodged there, and ever since it came into 
being, in the seventeenth century, it has been a 
" nest of nobles." The Duke of Norfolk still has 
his town house there (at No. 31) and George III 
was born there (also at No. 31, though not in the 
present house). Lord Castlereagh lived at No. 18, 
and the Chesterfield of the Letters was born next 
door, at London House, now the unoccupied home 
of the Bishops of London. Of No. 10, where Pitt, 
Derby and Gladstone had lived, I have already 

[44] 



PALL MALL AND PICCADILLY 

spoken. Every house there has a history, if one 
had the space to trace it out, and so has every one 
of the little streets in the neighborhood. 

King Street itself has Christie's, that famous auc- 
tion-room of great pictures, great furniture, plate, 
and all the things I shall never buy, and in Bury 
Street once lodged Swift, Steele, Moore and Crabbe. 
Burke had rooms at 67 Duke Street, and who that 
has seen an English play or read English novels has 
not been admitted to bachelor chambers in Jermyn 
Street .'' The fictitious bachelor population of that 
rather shabby thoroughfare must number in the tens 
of thousands. Sir Isaac Newton, that truly use- 
ful celibate, actually did lodge there, and so did 
Marlborough. It still has one or two comfortable 
hotels. 

It is necessary, I suppose, to glance at Carlton 
House Terrace, not for any present distinction, but 
for the sake of that sainted monarch, George IV, who 
dwelt here at Carlton House during the Regency. 
That house is now perished from the map, and the 
portico of pillars in front of it, that supported noth- 
ing, as now, some of them, said to be serving a use- 
ful purpose at the National Gallery. There was a 
rhyme current about these columns: 

"Dear little columns, all in a row 
What do you do there? 
Indeed, we don't know." 

[45] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

Waterloo Place, with its monument to officers and 
soldiers of the Crimean War, fills the space of Carl- 
ton House and that monument is one of the most im- 
pressive in London. Someone has made the dis- 
covery that though London squares often increase 
rents, London statues do not diminish them — and 
that is surprising. One would expect a discount of 
ten per cent, for facing, say, the statue of George 
III in Pall Mall, and perhaps the White Star Com- 
pany, whose offices are opposite, profits thereby, 
though I have not seen its lease. It was at Carlton 
House that Mr. Brummel saw so much of his " fat 
friend," George IV, and from Carlton House that 
the Beau was finally sent home drunk by the Prince, 
who never forgave the idle word; and at Carlton 
House it was that the Regent gave parties for his 
wife's ladies-in-waiting to which she herself was not 
invited. In short, the First Gentleman in Europe 
knew the royal road to fame, and Carlton House 
Terrace saw his " palmiest " days. To-day a few 
millionaires live there in splendid isolation, and Sir 
Gilbert Parker and Mr. Waldorf Astor opposite 
even contrive to practice literature there in their 
garrets. 

ni. 

By way of the Haymarket we may now go to 
Piccadilly Circus and proceed onward to Apsley 
House and the Pillars of Hercules. But the Hay- 

[46] 



PALL MALL AND PICCADILLY 

market itself is by no means to be despised. The 
Carlton Hotel has now brought the magnificence of 
Carlton House and the Regent within reach of all 
of us, and its palm-room and dining rooms, doubt- 
less exceed the Regent's splendor. His Majesty's 
Theater adjoining, now managed by Sir Herbert 
Beerbohm Tree, was opened for business in 1705 
with Sir John Vanbrugh and Congreve as its first 
managers, so that its history is not a thing of yes- 
terday. And the Haymarkct Theater across the 
way is little less venerable, since it was opened in 
1720, and Henry Fielding, the novelist, managed a 
company there which he humorously called " the 
Great Mogul's Troupe, recently dropped from the 
clouds." Addison, the great Addison, once lived in 
the Haymarket and there wrote a sad long poem 
called "The Campaign." Yet, until 1830, the 
Haymarket was legally a place set aside for the 
hay trade ! 

The name of Piccadilly is so striking that peo- 
ple have endeavored to establish accurately its 
origin. The hem about the skirt of a garment was 
called a " pickadil," and guesses have been made 
as to the application. Piccadilly Hall, a resort of 
gambling and entertainment in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, stood at the northeast corner of the Hay- 
market, and the first mention of the name is in a 
will dated April 14, 1623. The original Piccadilly 
ran no further than from the Haj'market to Sack- 

[47] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 



ville Street. From Sackville to Albemarle it was 
called Portugal Street in honor of Catherine of 
Braganza, Charles II's neglected queen. Beyond 
Albemarle Street it was simply a road. As late as 
1711 the town of London extended no farther west 
than Devonshire House; New Bond Street was still 
an open field, and Oxford Street was a wild bit of 
road infested by cut-throats ! But by 1791 Picca- 
dilly was already a crowded thoroughfare resembling 
its present descendant, for that year Horace Wal- 
pole writes : " I have twice been going to stop my 
coach in Piccadilly, thinking there was a mob, and it 
was only nymphs and swains sauntering." Nymphs 
there are sauntering still, often regrettably late at 
night, unescorted by any swains. It has become 
chiefly, almost wholly, a street of shops, and Devon- 
shire House may be said to be its first private resi- 
dence. 

Piccadilly is one of the romantic streets of the 
world, and Piccadilly Circus is, I believe, one of the 
spots where if you stand long enough you may meet 
everyone you ever knew. I have never stood there 
long enough, for it prompts anything but idleness,' 
but again and again, of an evening, as I turned down 
Coventry Street toward Leicester Square I have 
thought myself in Broadway. The electric light is 
an impersonal thing, but it would seem that only the 
Anglo-Saxon races use it lavishly for advertising 
purposes. The illuminated signs of this region and 

[48] 



PALL MALL AND PICCADILLY 

of Broadway in New York, seem to stamp the two 
nations as kindred in blood. 

Walking eastward from the Circus you come into 
Leicester Square and the region of the music-halls 
that I cannot recommend. They are good variety 
theaters, but I have always objected to spending 
long hours in the smoke of other people to the detri- 
ment of eyes and temper. I know I could do without 
music-halls on a desert island. 

Westward, in Piccadilly proper, there are only 
shops and shops and more shops. Of landmarks 
there are none, unless you count No. 23, where once 
(in 1805) resided Lady Hamilton, so dear to Lord 
Nelson. Hardship and want came upon her after 
the hero's death, and all that was respectable, as is 
the way of rigid respectability, shrank away from 
her, so that in 1813 we find her in prison for debt. 
A certain Alderman, Joshua Jonathan Smith, had 
her released and she fled to Calais, where she died in 
great poverty. Where once stood St. James's Hall, 
is now the new Piccadilly Hotel, and St. James's 
Church is the one reminder that Piccadilly was not 
always as to-day. Christopher Wren regarded this 
as one of his best churches, and it is indeed very 
handsome. It was consecrated July 13, 1684, and 
there it stands defying commerce, a tranquil spot 
in the whirl of traflSc. The hurry of Piccadilly is 
almost as the hurry of Broadway, and hardly an eye 
turns to the little old church. It has a font and 

[49] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 



other work bj the wood-sculptor Grinling Gibbons, 
and under Its floor lie buried such leisurely, peaceful 
people as Cotton, friend of Izaak Walton, the Com- 
pleat Angler, Van der Velde, the painter, Dr. Ar- 
buthnot the wit, or the friend of wits, to say nothing 
of Dodsley, the book-seller. 

Farther, on the opposite side of the street, is the 
Albany, where young men of taste and fashion 
lodged about a century ago. Lewis, the now for- 
gotten celebrity, author of " The Monk," occupied 
No I^. Canning, Byron, Lytton, Macaulay, Dis- 
raeli, all passed through this monastery on their 
pilgrimage, and even Gladstone was for a time a 
resident. Outwardly the Albany, set back from the 
street, is to-day much as it was a hundred years 
ago, still very trim and distinguished. 

Of Burlington House, near by, much might be 
written — even prior to its becoming the home of 
the Royal Academy. When Richard Boyle, Earl of 
Burlington, built it, in 1718, he virtually startled 
the town, and Pope rhymed about the house and 
Swift dined there. To-day it is the home of the 
Royal Society and other learned bodies whose quar- 
ters are provided free by the Government since its 
purchase of the house In 1854. And, of course, there 
is the Royal Academy, with Its monstrous summer 
exhibition of four thousand pictures which it Is 
customar}^ in England to laugh at. But rather are 
those acres of painted canvas a cause for tears, 

[50] 



PALL MALL AND PICCADILLY 

when one reflects how rare is merit under the sun. 
But it must not be supposed that no good things ever 
find their way to the Royal Academy. Every win- 
ter there is a loan exhibition of old masters that is 
truly a delight, and every year the Royal Academy 
has a dinner, at which the Prime Minister may be 
present, and some very complimentary remarks are 
exchanged between the Academicians and the Pre- 
mier. So that altogether there is much cheerfulness 
and good feeling; and if any reader should find 
himself unhappy here among the fresh paintings 
in June or July, let him think of these other consol- 
ing facts. Moreover, the Diploma Gallery, where 
hang the pictures that make painters into Acade- 
micians, contains a cartoon by Leonardo da Vinci 
that is alone worth coming for. It represents the 
Madonna and Child, St. Anne and St. John, origi- 
nally painted for the Church Dell' Annunziata of 
Florence. There are one or two other good things 
here, not to mention the sitters' chair that once be- 
longed to Sir Joshua Reynolds. 

Behind the Royal Academy, in Burlington Gar- 
dens, is a building that now belongs to the Civil 
Service Commission, and every time I pass it I 
shudder. Evidently examinations are conducted 
there, for young men with sternly set faces and pre- 
occupied, tortured expression, are repeating over to 
themselves the knowledge that these examinations 
demand. Every government clerk in England, I 

[51] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

suppose, can parse JEschylus and repeat the names 
of the Egyptian Kings, to say nothing of more 
fantastic knowledge. Only the morning when this 
is being written a newspaper prints a set of ques- 
tions recently set to English schoolboys : — " Why 
is the Red Sea red?" "Why does a bad egg 
smell?" "Why does a kettle sing?" "What 
causes echo?" "Where does the wind go to?" 
" Why does water freeze on the surface ? " " Why 
does hot water crack a thick tumbler? " " Why is 
red light used in photography?" "What causes 
fog? " All this is one question, and I have omitted 
a part of it. That is the sort of thing those young 
men in Burlington Gardens are thinking about, and 
you cannot but sympathize with them. 

Savile Row, into which you may turn, is filled 
with tailoring establishments, and is a wholly insig- 
nificant passage-way, yet Grote, the historian, lived 
and died (1871) at No. 12; at No. 14 lived Sheridan 
and at No. 17 he died in penury — poor " Sherry," 
the wit whom every contemporary courted, who 
had had " the world at his feet " — when under his 
feet was the place for it! 

And now we have strayed from Piccadilly, so that 
to come back we must pass either through Bond 
Street, which is to court disaster, or through Bur- 
lington Arcade, which is almost as imprudent. Yet 
I hardly know why I say that, since I have never 
bought in Bond Street anvthing but cigarettes, and 

[52] 



PALL MALL AND PICCADILLY 

the only house I looked at was No. 41, where the 
poor Prebendary, Laurence Sterne, died in 1768. 
But the jewelers' shop windows bloom there so lux- 
uriously, that it is customary to gloat over them 
and speak of them as dearly perilous to the coveting 
eye. But to many of us, the monasteries of Thibet 
are not safer than those windows, and one sign of 
human progress is the increasing indifference to 
what certain lady writers describe as " costly bau- 
bles." 

Burlington Arcade is really the more dangerous 
of the two. The covered passage casts a feeling 
of intimacy about the little shop windows filled with 
wearing apparel that makes them less resistible, and 
I am ever desiring to buy another green ash cane 
there. But even that longing has its limits. 

Pressing on to westward (for, Mr. Lucas not- 
withstanding, one no longer wanders in London), 
we cross Albemarle Street, and turn on the left into 
Arlington Street beside the Ritz Hotel. At No. 9 
is a blue tablet commemorating the occupancy of 
Charles James Fox, who seems to have had a passion 
for moving, as he had for gambling or for states- 
manship. He lived everywhere in this region, and 
where he didn't live he visited. The street was 
once the site of another great mansion, Goring 
House, but that was razed and the name of its owner 
remains in the street. Horace Walpole and his pet 
aversion, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, were both 

[53] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

residents here at one time. Now you merely see one 
or two superior lodging houses (the very essence of 
the London lodging house is its " superiority " over 
all others), a few taxicabs, and the cabmen thereof. 

Passing by the Ritz on the one hand and the 
Berkeley Hotel nearly facing it on the other, we 
are actually in front of Devonshire House, the Duke 
of Devonshire's town residence, a great London pal- 
ace. It looks not unlike a New England school- 
house, save that its long fa9ade of brick has been 
blackened by time and that the windows are nearly 
always curtained. It is absolutely plain, and you 
are reminded of Norfolk House in St. James's 
Square, which, but for the color of the bricks, 
greatly resembles it. In short, you realize that for 
ornate houses you must look in Park Lane among 
the diamond merchants, not among the hereditary 
peers of the realm. Senator Clark would laugh at 
such houses. 

Upon the site of Devonshire House and that of 
the Berkeley Hotel, once stood the great house of 
that Lord Clarendon whose name was Hyde, that 
Lord Chancellor who trafficked in offices of Charles 
II's reign. Evelyn, the diarist, who lived in Dover 
Street near at hand, records his sadness upon seeing 
Clarendon House in process of demolition, in 1683. 
Devonshire House was built in 1737 and always 
looked very much as it does to-day. It was famous 
in the days of Georgiana, the most brilliant of 

[54] 



PALL MALL AND PICCADILLY 



Devonshire duchesses, who gathered about her such 
men as Fox, Burke and Sheridan, and was a great 
force in the politics of her day. Her husband, as 
it happened, cared nothing at all about anything 
and lived in a happy indolence whilst his wife was 
pulling the wires. You see no signs of any such 
activity about Devonshire House to-day. It is a 
somber-looking pile, and the only thing I can here 
record of its nineteenth-century history is that 
Dickens and Bulwer-Lytton played in private the- 
atricals for charity there in 1851. 

Once you pass Bath House (home of the late Sir 
Julius Wernher, the " diamond king " ) you are in 
club-land again. The Green Park stretches on your 
left and on your right is the stately Naval and Mil- 
itary Club house at 94, once the home of Lord Palm- 
erston, and beyond it is that symphony in brown, 
the Junior Naval and Military Club. Through the 
windows set in the brown walls, you see the copper 
color of the smoking utensils, the brown of the fur- 
niture, the tan on the faces of the young soldiers — 
all is in the key of brown. The Badminton and the 
Isthmian follow at No. 100 and 105 respectively, 
and at 106 is the St. James's, a club given up to 
diplomats. So far as I have been able to observe 
about four men dine there regularly every evening. 
London clubs are plaintive on their losses of mem- 
bership, and it is no wonder. Exclusiveness is rap- 
idly going out of fashion in these democratic days, 

[55] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

but the scores and scores of clubs are still solemnly 
ignoring the fact. One day they will learn that 
they have (largely) ceased to exist. The little yel- 
low Savile Club at 107, with its coquettish bay win- 
dow, is sacred with memories of Stevenson. When 
Sir Sidney Colvin brought him there, R. L. S. found 
so many friends within those yellow walls, that we 
must hold the little building in a special affection. 
They are talking of removing elsewhere, however, 
because the Park Lane Hotel now arising, is said to 
desire the site. The Lyceum Club, dedicated to 
independent womanhood, at 128, is preceded at 127 
by the Cavalry Club — surely a strange juxtapo- 
sition. But the two buildings, though adjoining, 
seem oddly to ignore each other, and though I have 
seen much tobacco smoke through the windows of 
the Lyceum, the Cavalry Club windows are always 
discreetly curtained. Byron passed the first months 
after his maiTiage at No. 139, though I do not 
know who lives there now. But at 14i8 lives Lord 
Rothschild and some of the other houses in this 
terrace are also said to be peopled by this same 
needy family. It surely requires the contentment 
of Rothschilds, if they have contentment, to support 
the gloom of their neighbor at 149, Apsley House. 
Apslcy House was purchased by England in 1820 
as a gift to the Duke of Wellington, the conqueror 
of Napoleon. It was built by Lord Bathurst in 
1785, but wh}'^ it is so depressing it is impossible 

[56] 



PALL MALL AND PICCADILLY 

to say. It is the property of the present Duke 
of Wellington, but for a year, passing there 
nearly every day, I have never observed a sign of 
life about it. The equestrian statue of the Iron 
Duke, opposite it, seems to be bent on charging the 
old house and riding it down. But there it stands, 
a monument of gloom, the last thing in Piccadilly. 
Beyond this point was formerly the wilderness, and 
later Suburbia. I need hardly say that near Hyde 
Park Corner is virtually the beginning of the town. 
Knightsbridge leads to Kensington Gore and the 
great domain of middle-class London, Kensington. 
Sloane Street leads from Knightsbridge to Chelsea, 
and through the Park and Park Lane lie the ways to 
Bayswater and another huge section of the London 
of homes. But of this we shall speak later. We 
have come to the Pillars of Hercules; for a tavern 
of that name actually stood where Apsley House 
now stands in the dim days when Hyde Park Corner 
marked the beginning of the jungle. 



[57] 



FLEET, STREET AND THE TEMPLE 



THE Strand and Fleet Street meet at Temple 
Bar, but Temple Bar itself is non-existent. 
It is a mere name. The trumpery little 
" griffin," or dragon, now marking the spot is hardly 
observed. Many writers and many readers regret 
the disappearance of the real Temple Bar, a brick 
and iron gateway that marked the place " where 
the freedom of the City of London and the Liberty 
of the City of Westminster doth part." But, as is 
often the case with these old landmarks, we find we 
are regretting something that is best away. Until 
late in the eighteenth century the heads of con- 
demned men were still put upon the spikes of Temple 
Bar until they dropped, and that reflection miti- 
gates one's yearning for the gate. Dr. Johnson, 
the very spirit of Fleet Street (so runs the well- 
known story), was together with Goldsmith looking 
at the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey and 
modestly quoted a verse from Ovid, that may be 
rendered into " haply our own names may be min- 

[58] 



FLEET STREET AND THE TEMPLE 



gled with these." As they came to Temple Bar on 
their way home, Goldsmith's Irish wit saw a new 
application of the verse. " Haply," he said, glan- 
cing up to the heads on the gate, " our own names 
may be mingled with these ^ The gate was taken 
down in 1878 as obstructing traffic, and a man of 
means and piety has had it transplanted on his 
private estate at Waltham Cross. I shall not go to 
see it. 

The tradition is that in the " City " proper, the 
Mayor is lord, and if ever the sovereign had to resort 
to the Cathedral or elsewhere in this city, the Mayor 
ifiust first give his permission. A herald would 
knock upon the gate and another ask for the de- 
sired leave, whereupon the Mayor would hand his 
sword politely to the sovereign, and have it gra- 
ciously returned. What they would do now that 
the gate is gone I am not certain. The last sovereign 
to pass through it with that ceremony was Queen 
Victoria, when in 187^ she went to give thanks at 
St. Paul's for the recovery of the Prince of Wales 
from typhoid. 

The most interesting spot at this point, however, 
is not the griffin, but the Temple. Of the Law 
Courts and their newness and their impressive gray- 
ness I have already spoken. But the Temple can- 
not be so lightly dismissed. It is not merely a 
landmark; it is a little country by itself that has 
come down from another age, and the peace of the 

[59] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

centuries lies deeply upon it. One is reminded of 
a story by H. G. Wells, dealing with a certain green 
door in an otherwise blank wall, a door that once 
found, led to gardens of happiness. But it was 
difficult to find the door again, or at all events, to re- 
enter there, and you may pass the low and somewhat 
narrow entrance to Middle Temple Lane half a dozen 
times in a day without observing it. But should 
you turn your feet down that slender passage, you 
will slip into another century. Often and often 
have I turned down that lane and neither Fleet Street 
nor I was quite the same when I emerged. The 
Temple with its great age seems to impress upon you 
that the one unpardonable sin is to take yourself 
and your own existence with undue seriousness. You 
measure by centuries the distance between the Tem- 
plars and Shakespeare, between Selden and Sheridan, 
between Goldsmith and Thackeray. But the Temple 
seems to say: "Yes, tliey have all been here — was 
it yesterday.? — they have been and gone, one con- 
tinuous stream ! " Like Charles Lamb at Oxford, I 
feel almost of the Temple whenever I am in it, espe- 
cially called to the Bar, as it were, and admitted ad 
cundem. 

Nevertheless, admission as a " Bencher " is not 
eas\'. I amused myself one day by looking up the 
qualifications for that honor, and discovered that 
" no attorney at law, solicitor, writer to the signet, 
or clerk in Chancer}^, parliamentary agent, or agent 

[60] 




St. Mary le Strand 



FLEET STREET AND THE TEMPLE 

in any court original or appellate, clerk to any jus- 
tice of the peace, or person acting in any of these 
capacities " — shall be admitted. It seems as though 
the most insuperable obstacle to becoming a Bencher 
was to know anything- about law. Also a certificate 
of respectability is required, and, at Lincoln's Inn, 
the candidate must give assurance that he is " not 
in trade." Nevertheless, despite the restrictions, 
you will always regret when you visit the Temple that 
you are not a Bencher. 

To eat your dinners in that Hall of the Middle 
Temple (for that is what being a Bencher chiefly 
consists in) must be one of the pleasures of life — 
if not too often indulged in. For though the win- 
dows are a very handsome Gothic and the rest of 
the room in fine Elizabethan style (built in 1572), 
yet the long benches are without backs and that 
would hardly make for comfort. All the same it is 
magnificent. On the windows the blazoned shields 
of peers who had been Benchers, the arms of all 
other Benchers on the panels of the wainscoting, 
give the place a dignity that the English barrister 
never quite gets over. In the rooms of ease, behind 
the Hall, Turkey-carpeted, firelit, hang innumerable 
pictures in black and white of bygone Benchers. 
Sheridan, Burke, Thackeray, you find them all there, 
and it must be a solace to current Benchers that 
some of the greatest names overhead are of men 
who, after all, failed to practice law. 

[6i] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

But the best of the Temple seems to me to be out 
of doors. You walk in those old passages and al- 
leys, like Brick Court, Fountain Court, Crown Of- 
fice Row, Lamb Court, and you gloat — not in the 
manner of Kipling's Stalky ^ Co., but with a deli- 
cate, ineffable gloating — something akin to the 
feeling you have in Addison's Walk at Magdalene 
College, Oxford. Indeed, there is here much of the 
air of an ancient seat of learning — and something 
more. Brick Court, particularly, seems to focus 
memories of certain names that are dear to all of 
us. To begin with there is that Temple fountain, 
where Ruth Pinch so sentimentally met John West- 
lock. But the memories extend considerably farther 
back. In that Hall Shakespeare's " Twelfth 
Night " was produced, February 2, 1602, while the 
author was yet alive and in London. There is every 
reason to believe he was personally present at that 
performance. And at No. 2 Brick Court Goldsmith 
had rooms from 1765 until his death, in 1794. It 
was here he wrote the " Deserted Village," " The 
Traveller," and, in his " Animated Nature," described 
the treeful of rooks upon which his windows opened. 
Even now the clamor of birds here is so loud and 
joyous that you see at once this is an hereditary 
stronghold of theirs, where for centuries they have 
dwelt without fear or reproach. Thackeray touches 
upon these facts in his " English Humorists,'* 
though he himself had rooms in the Inner Temple, 

[62] 



FLEET STREET AND THE TEMPLE 

at 10 Crown Office Row. At No. 2 of the same Row 
Charles Lamb saw such light as was here on Febru- 
ary 10th, 1775, And when it comes to lawyers, the 
Middle Temple is rich in alumni of great fame, such 
as Clarendon, Somers, Blackstone, and Eldon, while 
the Inner Temple can claim no less than Coke, Lyt- 
tleton and Thurlow. 

The line of division between the two is not ap- 
parent to the visitor. Inner and Middle Temples 
form one domain, hidden away from Fleet Street, as 
it seems, and approachable by the narrowest of 
gates, but standing broad and massive as you go 
down toward the Thames Embankment. The Outer 
Temple, the westernmost of the original three, no 
longer exists. Once the tilt-yard of the Knights 
Templars, it now supports office buildings. 

The Temple Church, within the precincts of the 
Inner Temple, is shared by both of them. They 
have always so shared it, for that church existed 
long before there were any lawyers in it. It was 
consecrated in 1185 by Heraclius, the Patriarch of 
Jerusalem, who happened to be in England at the 
time, begging money for his Patriarchate. Consid- 
erable restoration has befallen that church since 
1185, but it is still beautiful. The Norman effigies 
— what is left of them — are fenced off and ticketed 
and labeled ; one is said by the verger to be the Earl 
of Pembroke, first owner of the Temple after the 
Templars left it, and the others are called his sons. 

[63] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 



The Earl, as it happens, sleeps in the Abbey — and 
it doesn't matter. Outside in the little church- 
yard, a remnant of it unenclosed, is the tomb of 
Oliver Goldsmith, which is more important and 
more touching than a dozen Earls of Pembroke. 
The verger sells you picture-postcards (Temples 
seem to come to that), tells you that the organ is one 
of the best in England, and shows you which side 
is occupied by Inner and which by Middle Templars. 
It is all irrelevant. You cannot help seeing with 
your mind's eye the long procession of the worship- 
ers, the original Templars, with their white mantles, 
their coats of mail, their brown faces baked by ori- 
ental suns, — fierce and warlike monks, who believed 
that the way to serve God was to kill as many as 
possible of His creatures in Asia Minor ; and, coming 
after them, the black-robed lawyers, eminently men 
of peace, given only to bloodless contention, clerics 
at first, that is men who could read and write, but 
growing more and more in learning, until there ap- 
peared such men as Selden, Milton's "learned Sel- 
den," and Burke and the modern Chancellors! 

A word about the Templars is in place in 
connection with their former home. Their order, 
founded by Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, early in 
the Twelfth Century, was not confined to England. 
It existed in almost every country in Europe. Their 
first London home was at the Holbom end of Chan- 
cery Lane. But being rich they bought in 1184 the 

[64] 



FLEET STREET AND THE TEMPLE 

land of the present Temple, built the church and 
their houses and made themselves generally comfort- 
able. They fought hard in the Holy Land, were 
often defeated and cut to pieces by the Saracens, 
and yet they seem to have been everywhere unpopu- 
lar. They were always quarreling with the more or 
less rival order of the Hospitallers — the Knights 
of St. John. Gradually they brought with them 
many Eastern practices and were accused of sorcery, 
heresy, of " worshiping a cat," and so on. In 1307, 
Edward II finally seized the Temple, suppressed 
the order, and gave their home to Aymer de Valence, 
his cousin, Earl of Pembroke. Soon thereafter the 
Hospitallers got the property by a papal decree, 
on the condition that they put it not to " profane 
uses," and promptly rented it to the lawyers — a 
compliment the lawyers of to-day would doubtless 
prize. There, however, they have been ever since. 
At the outset they met their clients for consultation 
in the Round Church ; now they meet them, if at all, 
in electric lighted chambers and offices. But in es- 
sence they are the same lawyers. 

I have said nothing about the Inner Temple Hall, 
because that is comparatively new and unimportant. 
I have said nothing about much else that is here, the 
sundials, the greenery, the slices of garden. It is 
useless to describe every object separately, because 
that would only tend to confuse. The one thing I 
should like to convey, no matter how unobtrusively, 

[65] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

is the eighteenth century picture of busy tran- 
quillity or of tranquil occupation, as you will; of 
the strange air of peace in the very echo of Fleet 
Street's noise, of the genuine beauty that envelops 
the place, independent even of the many memorials 
that must appeal to the most indifferent; in short, 
of the true enchantment of this spot that lies amid 
the grime of London. The Temple to-day is al- 
most precisely as Lamb described it nearly a hundred 
years ago. We glory in progress and swear by the 
** ringing grooves of change." Yet how we relish 
a piece of permanence like this ! 

From the Temple it is both natural and easy to 
stroll up Chancery Lane, which nearly faces it, in 
order to glance at Lincoln's Inn. This Inn has a 
considerable claim upon one's interest, for Sir 
Thomas More, Lord Shaftesbury, Oliver Cromwell, 
William Pitt, Canning, Disraeli and Gladstone are 
upon its roll of one-time members. Before you 
reach it, however, you cannot but be impressed by 
this anomaly ; they think nothing in London of tuck- 
ing away in the narrowest of alleys the most 
imposing of buildings. In France or America no 
one would think of making such an institution as 
the New Record Office, on the right, open into a 
passage like Chancery Lane. But here no one seems 
to care in the least. The spirit seems to be, — Put 
up the building, and we shall squeeze into it any- 
how. That may be one aspect of the famous Eng- 

[66] 



FLEET STREET AND THE TEMPLE 

lish doctrine of " muddling through somehow," 
which has only recently begun to break down, but 
which is still amazingly successful. Of course there 
is a reason, a kind of noumenon, as Coleridge would 
have said, behind the phenomenon. Once upon a 
time this was the site of Rolls Yard and the Master 
of the Rolls held his court here. Here also stood 
the Rolls chapel upon the site of the Domus Conver- 
sorum, the Domus that Henry III erected in 1223 
as a sort of Prytaneum for converted Jews. About 
a century and a half later Edward III gave the 
House and the Chapel to the Master of the Rolls. 
For some five hundred years thereafter every Master 
of the Rolls was also " Keeper of the House for 
Converted Jews," an institution extinct as the griffin 
on Temple Bar. Five hundred years ! Then a 
curious thing happened. A member of the well- 
known Anglo-Jewish family of Jessel was appointed 
Master of the Rolls in 1873. It seemed a good 
time to shear away the office with the absurd title 
of " Keeper of the House," etc., which has had no 
existence during all those centuries, and accordingly 
the office was shorn. That is the way customs die 
in England. And, as a recent American comic op- 
era has it, the worst of it is, we like it ! 

They keep state papers in the record office, in- 
cluding documents to a very early period of English 
History. And in the Record Office Museum you 
can see some very interesting things, such as the 

[67] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

Domesdaj Book, the very original survey ordered 
by William the Conqueror in 1086. I should not, 
however, advise anyone to try to read a few pages 
as he runs, for the script is difficult and the language 
not the French of Paris. The other day an English 
boy in an examination paper said that the Domes- 
day Book was " Paradise Lost," but that can be dis- 
proved at the Record Office. Here may also be 
found Nelson's Log of the " Victory," describing 
the battle of Trafalgar; one of the few documents 
in existence bearing Shakespeare's signature (it dif- 
fers from Bacon's), a petition to George III from 
the Continental Congress, dated 1775, and a letter 
from George Washington to the same unwise mon- 
arch, dated 1795. Facing the Record Office is the 
front of the Incorporated Law Society, another fine 
building, and on that same side is the entrance to 
Lincoln's Inn. 

The gateway leading to the Inn from Chancery 
Lane is another of those doors opening into a little 
world of beauty peculiar to London. This was the 
gate upon which Ben Jonson is supposed to have 
worked as a bricklayer. But as Jonson was born in 
1573 and the gate built in 1518, that would seem 
to dispose of the legend. Here too you find beauty 
and peace and dignity, but it is not the Temple. 
The Temple is still alive and busy with coming and 
going, a sort of unbroken procession from medi- 
aeval days. But in the grave enclosures of Lincoln's 

[681 



FLEET STREET AND THE TEMPLE 



Inn you scarcely see a living soul from one hour to 
another. The last time I was there a policeman 
was the only occupant of New Square, that long 
grass plot that has been some four centuries green. 
Here too is a beautiful chapel, built by Inigo Jones 
in 1623, but it has no glamour of crusaders about it. 
In short, despite the great names upon its rolls, it 
seems remote and detached from the Temple, and I 
am not aware that many ancient customs survive 
there. In the Temple during term time a servant 
of the Middle Temple stands in Essex Court at about 
twenty minutes to six and winds a horn. In olden 
times the object was to announce that the dinner 
hour was approaching and to call the students back 
from the other side of the river, or wherever they 
might be. The Templars have long ceased to go 
across, but still the picturesque custom persists. 

In the same manner, the curfew bell still rings 
every evening at nine o'clock in Gray's Inn, which 
is a little beyond the Holborn end of Chancery Lane, 
another school of law that has been in existence 
since 1371. Gray's Inn takes one into Holborn, 
a considerable distance away from Fleet Street, but 
it should not be overlooked. Together with Staple 
Inn, an inn of Chancery, it forms one of the oldest 
bits of London in existence, for the great London 
Fire spared this region. Besides, Lord Bacon was 
a member of Gray's, and Goldsmith, Southey and 
Macaulay were other residents. 

[69] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

Lincoln's Inn Fields, the huge square that lies to 
the west of Lincoln's Inn, if you approach it from 
Chancery Lane, contains a variety of landmarks. 
Newcastle House, at No. 67, once the residence of 
the Duke of Newcastle, George II's Prime Minister, 
is still worth seeing, but No. 55, once a home of 
Tennyson, is now demolished. On the south side is 
the Royal College of Surgeons with a great museum 
that must be of interest to doctors, and which I 
have not visited. But Sir John Soane's Museum 
on the northern side is well worth a visit. It is the 
only museum in my experience where the personal 
card of the visitor is demanded, but even for that 
you are amply repaid. There is to be found a fa- 
mous Canaletto picture of the Grand Canal and the 
series of Hogarths, alone worth coming for, the 
" Election " and the " Rake's Progress " — to say 
nothing of an excellent Watteau. Those Hogarths 
make the museum, which after all, was only Sir 
John's private residence. For Lincoln's Inn Fields 
was once a nest of fashion. Sir John built the 
Bank of England and left a good many sketches of 
his own work, not to speak of much other bric-a- 
brac, but he has left nothing better than the " Rake's 
Progress." 

n. 

Returning to Fleet Street along Chancery Lane, 
we come upon the passage leading to Clifford's Inn, 

[70] 



FLEET STREET AND THE TEMPLE 

and do not enter there. The passage and the arch 
are quite enough to see, for the old inn is fallen 
into decay and is now being offered for sale by a 
real estate agent whose sign is the most conspicuous 
landmark of that preserve. And only the pious an- 
gler, perhaps, will visit St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, 
the church that contains a memorial window to 
Izaak Walton, one time warden of the church that 
stood upon the site, where the present one was built 
in 1832. Outside in one of the walls is a statue 
of Queen Elizabeth, removed from Lud Gate, an 
effigy which does Her Majesty's charms little credit. 

Across the way there is still a Mitre Court leading 
to a Mitre Tavern, supposed to be on the site of 
that other Mitre, where the indefatigable Boswell 
met his hero. Dr. Johnson, early in their acquaint- 
ance, by an appointment which mightily flattered 
and puffed the Scotchman. Indeed, Mr. Boswell 
told the Doctor as much. 

'* Give me your hand," cried Johnson, " I have 
taken a liking to you ! " — the pleasantest words 
that fell upon Boswell's ears. They finished a bot- 
tle of port each at that particular seance and parted 
warmly between one and two of the clock in the 
morning, Johnson trudging to his rooms at No. 1 
Inner Temple Lane. It was only one of many meet- 
ings at the Mitre and Boswell rapidly became an 
intimate, and Goldsmith, as well as others, was often 
present; and on one famous occasion, when Boswell 

[71] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

earnestly boasted of Scotch scenery, Johnson 
roundly informed him that " the noblest prospect 
which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that 
leads him to England." Those many sessions in 
the Tavern did not tend to prolong life. Johnson 
himself, to be sure, lived to a good old age (seventy- 
five), but poor Goldsmith was only forty-six when 
he died. And the other day, passing by No. 102 
Great Russell Street, I observed a tablet to the 
memory of Topham Beauclerk, a young sprig of 
fashion, fond of Dr. Johnson's society, who was 
only forty-one when he died. Beauclerk's sister, 
Lady Diana, as the same tablet indicates, lived to 
the age of seventy-four. Presumably she was not 
involved in the Johnsonian frolics. 

The forceful mind of Johnson must have dwelt 
in a forceful body, though from the statue in the 
rear of St. Clement Danes one would hardly suppose 
so. Nevertheless, wherever he was, there also was 
the throne of English letters in his time. I have 
often amused myself by a quest for readers of " Ras- 
selas." I have never read it through myself and I 
am persuaded that no one has — excepting perhaps 
a few university extension lecturers. And who has 
ever waded through the " Rambler Essays "? As to 
the Dictionary, no one but Buckle, the historian of 
civilization, could have perused it. Buckle had a 
penchant for dictionaries. Yet the shrines of John- 
son in the region of Fleet Street seem to overshadow 

[72] 



FLEET STREET AND THE TEMPLE 

everything else. If jou care to make your way 
through Fetter Lane, by many narrow and circuitous 
passages, into an oblong yard filled with printing 
shops and called Gough Square, you will find a Geor- 
gian house of red brick, still intact, with a tablet 
commemorating Johnson's residence. In Bolt Court 
he also resided, and the Cheshire Cheese in Wine Of- 
fice Court, subsists upon his memory. Nothing 
indicates that Goldsmith once lived, and, it is said, 
wrote the " Vicar of Wakefield," at No. 6 of this 
Court (it is near 145 Fleet Street), but Johnson's 
Chair at the Cheshire Cheese, or what passes for his 
chair, is enclosed in a glass case, and to prove its 
authenticity, a copy of the great dictionary (first 
edition) lies spread open upon it. 

That Cheshire Cheese, by the way, is a resort 
maintained by tourists. It claims a continuous ex- 
istence since, I believe, 1675, and to this day the 
floors are sanded as of old. To this day they serve 
every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, a pie made 
of steak, oysters, larks and kidney. On the off 
days, if you chance to pass the open door of the 
kitchen, you may see dozens of little bodies that pur- 
port to be larks, lying ready for the morrow — and 
yet all touristry throngs there to eat that pie ! 

The street abounds in memorials, and despite its 
bustle and teeming newspaper offices, still has the 
air of the eighteenth century about it. It seems 
impossible to dwell upon all the landmarks, literary 

[73] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

and otherwise. I see I have passed over the Kit-Kat 
Club, that was wont to meet at Jacob Tonson's, the 
bookseller's, in Shire Lane, a thoroughfare long 
since obliterated, and now covered by the Law 
Courts. How often had Sir Richard Steele, star 
contributor to " The Spectator," not drunk himself 
under the table at the Kit-Kat dinners ! It used to 
be a complaint of the members that it needed so much 
wine to wake Addison up, that Dick Steele was drunk 
long before that awakening. 

Tonson had a taste for noble lords and their so- 
ciety and the Duke of Kingston one day vowed that 
" egad, he knew of a lady who was beautiful, and 
brilliant and witty enough to warrant her admission 
to the club." That was all well enough, said his 
fellow members, but they could say nothing until 
they saw the lady. " Gad, it should be done," cried 
the Duke, and despatched a messenger to his house, 
ordering that Lady Mary be dressed becomingly and 
brought to him out of hand. And Lady Mary, 
in future known as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 
was accordingly brought. She was seven years old 
then, and she sat in all her finery upon her father's 
knee and entertained the gentlemen of the Kit-Kat 
with retort and repartee that were perhaps less 
stinging than at times after she was grown. But 
the grim walls of the Law Courts tell no tales of 
the Kit-Kat, though there remains many a tale to 
teU. 

[74] 



FLEET STREET AND THE TEMPLE 

Nor have I spoken of Serjeant's Inn, just above 
the Temple where those picturesque pleaders the Ser- 
jeants, or fratres servientes^ as the Knights Tem- 
plars called their servitors (imagine Serjeant Buz- 
fuz cleaning a coat of mail!), had their home. The 
only memorial I found there is one to Walter Delane, 
the great editor of the Times. 

Bouverie Street, rumbling with Lord NorthcliiFe's 
printing presses, and adorned by the oflSces of Punch, 
has already been mentioned, and so has Tudor 
Street, and that particular riparian region that in 
King James's day was Alsatia, a sort of city of ref- 
uge for debtors, rogues and criminals of every sort. 

And surely no one should pass that brief avenue 
called St. Bride's, without turning into it and en- 
tering the church of the same name. The church is 
hemmed in by ignoble buildings so that from Fleet 
Street you see almost nothing but the tower — a 
tower well worth seeing. It is one of Sir Christo- 
pher Wren's best. The present edifice was built in 
1680, but as early as 1235 a church of the name 
already existed on the spot, for we learn that in 
that year one Thomas de Hall, after slaying one 
Thomas de Battle, fled for sanctuary to St. Bride's. 
It must have been that church that was burned in 
the great fire after the plague. Milton once lived in 
a house that stood in the churchyard and Wynkyn 
de Worde, the printer of the beautiful name, second 
only to Caxton, and publisher of the " Golden 

[75] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

Legend," lies buried here ; and in the central aisle 
within is the grave of the author of " Pamela " and 
** Clarissa Harlow." And if I say nothing of the 
Fleet prison, which stood just beside Ludgate Circus, 
where now stands Memorial Hall, in Farringdon 
Street, it is because Dickens has made that common 
property. 



[76] 



VI 



FROM ST. PAUL'S TO CHARTER- 
HOUSE 

ONE of the most absorbing rambles in London 
may be taken in something under three hours. 
It begins at Blackfriars Bridge and ends at 
Gray's Inn. That sounds like a Zigzag Journey 
once dear to certain writers for children, yet it is 
highly plausible, even logical, to say nothing of its 
charm. A part of the secret Is that it Includes St. 
Paul's Cathedral. That is a " sight " which occu- 
pies ten pages of Baedeker, but It is astonishing how 
little you are disposed to linger over it ! Nothing 
could Induce me to say how little time I have spent 
there all told, though I have often looked at it in 
passing, and that is another secret, though an open 
one. Outside it is perhaps the most truly " Lon- 
donish " of buildings. Within It is terrifying by 
Its emptiness. 

But to begin at the beginning: You take the 
Underground to Blackfrairs (Shakespeare and Ben 
Jonson once lived in this region), and walk to the 
left from Queen Victoria Street, past the Times of- 
fice and Printing House Square Into Carter Lane, 

[77] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

not without pausing at Bell Yard to see another odd 
stone in the base of Shakespeare's fame. A marble 
tablet here tells you that in this place resided one 
Thomas Quiney, who wrote the only extant letter to 
Shakespeare in 1598. 

Mr. Quiney little knew that he was achieving im- 
mortality by that one insignificant letter. A whole 
network of narrow lanes covers this region, one of 
the oldest in London. But commerce and industry 
have invaded it to such an extent, that it is not now 
attractive. 

Past the Choir House and Deanery of St. Paul's 
you walk and past the site of Doctors Commons, on 
the right, of which I suppose the Bishop of Lon- 
don's marriage registry office is still a reminder, and 
you are in St. Paul's Churchyard — that is in the 
street which is so called. The old coffee houses 
that once drew the eternal coffee-house patrons. Dr. 
Johnson, Goldsmith et al. (what nerves they must 
have had!) are now vanished. Mostly the church- 
yard is occupied by drapers, wholesale and retail. 

The outside of St. Paul's is magnificent. It is as 
English as the Bank of England, and that is high 
praise. It is vast and gray and grim, yet with a 
beauty that is marred neither by the grayness nor 
the grimness. Rather is it enhanced by them. The 
broad low steps, the great blackened columns, the 
doves fluttering forever about them, give it the ef- 
fect of a fine pagan temple, and, indeed, legend says 

[78] 



ST. PAUL'S TO CHARTERHOUSE 

that a temple of Diana once stood upon the site. 
The two short towers somewhat destroy that effect, 
still the entire gray f a9ade and the great dome make 
St. Paul's a landmark of the world. Queen Anne's 
statue before it is a typical English statue, but it is 
scarcely perceived. 

Once you enter the doors, however, a change comes 
over the spirit of your vision. You have an irresist- 
ible feeling that you have come on the wrong day, 
cleaning day, perhaps, or moving day, when all ex- 
cept the benches had already been taken out. In a 
kind of despair you look about the walls seeking and 
finding not. If you have the disadvantage of having 
seen the churches of Italy you are inclined to flee 
from this strange atmosphere that suggests what 
you will but religion. St. Peter's in Rome, with its 
booths of confessionals in all tongues, and the long 
fishing rods of bamboo with which the devout are 
touched after a genuflexion and a prayer by some 
unseen human mechanism wielding the rod, is suffi- 
ciently suggestive of the market place. But St. 
Paul's has not even these diversions to attract the 
eye. At the angle of the South aisle and transept is 
a ticket office where an usher in black sells tickets 
for the crypt, the library, the galleries. 

Dutifully you begin to wander about in search 
of monuments and your eye falls upon Lord Leigh- 
ton's in the north aisle, which is truly beautiful. 
Others attract you by their names if not by their 

[79] 



LONDON; AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

merit, as General Gordon's, just beyond. You also 
come across Sir Joshua Reynolds and a number of 
admirals and soldiers like Rodney, the generals and 
Admiral Napier, and Ponsonby of Waterloo. Wel- 
lington and Nelson have notable monuments here 
and tombs in the crypt below. In the South aisle 
are pictures by Watts and Holman Hunt, including 
" The Light of the World." I fear this is becom- 
ing a catalogue, but it is so difficult to make it any- 
thing else, and in any case it is not a long one. 
Below, in the crypt, lies Sir Christopher Wren, him- 
self, the builder of the Cathedral, and those two 
heroes, Wellington and Nelson. But the most im- 
pressive thing is the funeral car of the Duke of Wel- 
lington, cast from the guns he had taken from the 
enemy. 

No one can gainsay a people that chooses to ideal- 
ize a soldier, and, indeed, the Iron Duke is something 
of an idol the world over. Nevertheless, one may 
doubt whether all tastes would agree that a church 
is the place for such a relic as the car — with its 
decorations of rusty guns and muskets. Happily, 
however, it is not we who are called upon to decide 
that. In the crypt are also buried Reynolds, 
Turner, Lawrence, and Millais — soldiers and 
artists. 

Well, you say, is this all.? No; but if the day is 
fair that is probably all you will linger to contem- 
plate. A few folk there are in the benches seated 

[80] 



ST. PAUL'S TO CHARTERHOUSE 

and silent (though not always silent) praying, you 
think. But in their hands are only guide-books. 
You go forth into the Churchyard once again and 
there among the shops you completely forget the 
interior of St. Paul's. 

Before the fire the Churchyard was the home of 
stationers, and Stationers' Hall is only a step away. 
Many of Shakespeare's works were originally pub- 
lished here and where the offices of the Religious 
Tract Society now are, was Newbury's house, that 
bought Goldsmith's " Vicar of Wakefield " for sixty 
guineas, no less. Dr. Johnson acted as literary 
agent in the transaction and did the bargaining. 
Goldsmith could never have extracted that sum for 
himself. St. Paul's School, founded in 1512 by 
Colet, the friend of Erasmus, is now gone to West 
Kensington. The " Yard " is scarcely the place for 
a school. Still, even now a little patch of green re- 
mains on the northeastern side. I believe it was 
Pierre Loti who expressed astonishment at the abun- 
dance of trees and flowers in London. You can see 
a tree from every street. It is the compensation for 
a weeping climate. Of the old St. Paul's, destroyed 
by the Fire of 1666, virtually nothing remains — 
except in literature. 

Through a narrow lane you make your way to 
Paternoster Row, to the north of the Cathedral, and 
find that many of the stationers, who have aban- 
doned the churchyard to the drapers, are harbored in 

[8i] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

the Row. They don't seem to sell Paternosters, or 
rosaries, anywhere. But when St. Paul's was a 
Catholic Church this was the great headquarters of 
all manner of ecclesiastical gear. And the makers 
of these sacred things were, many of them by a kind 
of reaction, a rascally crew. But the Reformation 
dispersed them to other callings, and about 1720 the 
booksellers came here and in the Chapter Coffee 
House (No. 50) they met, traded in copyrights and 
talked shop ; and poor Chatterton, when he came up 
to London no doubt drank in this talk with eager 
ears. In the following century (1848) when Smith 
& Elder had accepted for publication " Jane Eyre " 
by " Currer Bell," Charlotte Bronte and her sister 
came to London to see her publisher and they 
put up at the Chapter because she knew no other 
hostelry, and because its name sounded canonical and 
in good odor. To-day she would probably go to 
the Ritz or Carlton, even though the Chapter is 
there, traflBcking in things stronger than coffee. 
One is hardly surprised to learn that Johnson and 
Goldsmith were also patrons of the house. In 
Warwick Lane near by, you may look upon Amen 
Corner and the Close of the canons of St. Paul, a 
tiny precinct of peace, somewhat resembling the 
Temple, or you may omit that ceremony, and con- 
tinue through Ivy Lane into Newgate Street. 

Of course Newgate Street is aggressively modern. 
'Buses, shops and aerated bread places wipe out 

[82] 



ST. PAUL'S TO CHARTERHOUSE 



Amen Corners and Amen Courts as light of day 
wipes out a dream. But almost facing you is 
Christ Church, all that is left to remind you of 
Christ's Hospital, that Charles Lamb, one of its 
pupils, has made forever dear to us. The post-of- 
fice buildings now occupy the site of the school 
(which has moved to Horsham) and indeed, this may 
be called the country of the post-ofl5ce. It covers 
much of the neighboring territory. At the corner 
of Newgate Street and Warwick Lane, on the left, 
stands the house (with a tablet) that marks the an- 
cient dwelling-place in London of the Earls of War- 
wick, including that Warwick who was called " The 
King-maker." Warwicks make kings no more, 
either in Newgate Street or elsewhere, and the site 
of the ancient prison is now occupied by a veritable 
palace of Justice, home of London's criminal courts. 
The Old Bailey is impressively new, but the judicial 
ceremonial with its wigs and gowns is hoary and 
picturesque with age. Across the way, opposite, is 
the Church of St. Sepulchre's, and in this walk, 
which I have taken more than once, I invariably 
pause at that point. 

There is something in the atmosphere of these 
city churches that is delightful. They seem to say, 
"We care very little for the patronage of those 
about us, principally because they seem to care lit- 
tle for us. But any reverent stranger is welcome.'* 
You never see a human being in these churches. Yet 

[83] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

St. Sepulchre's is beautiful. It dates from the fif- 
teenth century, holds the tomb of Queen Elizabeth's 
tutor, Roger Ascham, and ought to be a Mecca for 
Americans, because Captain John Smith, the hus- 
band of Pocahontas, lies buried here. As the in- 
scription sajs (the original is no longer legible), 
" Here Ijes one conquer'd that hath conquer'd 
Kings ! " But always the church seems empty. It 
used to have an intimate interest for the Newgate 
prisoners. Someone had left an endowment that 
compelled the clerk, or bellman, to stand under the 
"window of the condemned cell at Newgate on the eve 
of an execution and to sing some cheerful verses be- 
ginning. 

All ye that in the condemned hold do lie. 
Prepare you for to-morrow you shall die. 

The prisoners naturally could do nothing to the 
singer under the circumstances. But in the morn- 
ing, when the prisoner started for Tyburn on the 
way to death, St. Sepulchre's very delicately and 
charmingly presented him with a nosegay — which 
sounds a little better than the singing. I dare say 
the prisoners looked their last upon St. Sepulchre's 
with regret, and so does the visitor to-day. Very 
probably the visitor walks down Giltspur Street 
toward Smithfield. 

You come upon Cock Lane a few steps awaj', and 
you have but to look at it to know that the ghost 

[84] 



ST. PAUL'S TO CHARTERHOUSE 

which so stirred Dr. Johnson a hundred and fifty 
years or so ago will not now trouble you. It is a 
drab enough little alley, though it commemorates 
another event of importance. Here, at what is 
called Pye Corner, the Great Fire of 1666, that be- 
gan at Pudding Lane, finally and miraculously 
stopped. 

Across the way the entire street is occupied partly 
by the post-office yard, but chiefly by St. Bartholo- 
mew's Hospital. I cannot say why the name of that 
hospital thrills me, but it does. Its long history 
must have a share in the thrill. Few hospitals can 
" point with pride " to a life of eight centuries. 
They were common enough in mediaeval times, but 
not many have come down through the ages with a 
virtually continuous history. Rahere, its founder, 
a prime favorite of Henry I, must have endowed it 
with a special potency. With Guy's and Bedlam, 
it shares a place in English literature. It has ro- 
mance about it, too; the discoverer of the circula- 
tion of the blood was one of the teachers in its med- 
ical school, and Dick Whittington was one of 
its benefactors. The buildings are all modern, of 
the prevailing gray tone, and its courts are busy 
with nurses, students, internes and patients. At the 
end of Giltspur Street, turning to the right you 
come upon its gateway, and if you choose, you enter 
the little church of St. Bartholomew-the-Less, just 
within the gate. That church is a little jewel. It is 

[85] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

of about the size of a spacious private drawing-room, 
and the patients who worship there must benefit in 
health from sheer delight in that little sanctuary. 
It goes without saying there was not a soul inside 
it, and the last time I was in Smithfield I sat down 
there for a few moments* rest after a long walk, 
and soon felt more than rested: I was truly re- 
freshed by the charm and the peace of the place. 

From here you make your way along West Smith- 
field toward St. Bartholomew-the-Great, no more 
than a moderate stone's-throw distant. How popu- 
lar churches must have been in the old days ! It is 
wonderful, though, how well they are kept up even 
now, empty though they be. I always mean to 
advise people to visit some of these distant City 
churches on Sunday, to see whether they are any 
fuller than on week-days. But I always relent. 

You cross the street known as Little Britain, 
where Benjamin Franklin mastered his craft as a 
printer, and for the sake of Franklin I walked the 
length of it to Aldersgate Street. Useless piety! 
It is a narrow and shabby thoroughfare given up 
to petty trades and there is not even a printer's shop 
visible to remind you of Franklin. Near to the 
corner of this Little Britain and West Smithfield is 
a tablet to mark the memory that on that spot one 
Philpot and divers others suffered martyrdom by 
fire in the sixteenth century, when burning at the 
stake for conscience' sake was so sadly fashionable, 

[86] 




Sentry at Buckingham Palace 



ST. PAUL'S TO CHARTERHOUSE 

If such a tablet existed in Franklin's day, how that 
shrewd and comfortable philosopher must have re- 
flected upon the passage of time ! In his age 
common sense and reason were the high divinities. 
Barbarities like burning and quartering were no 
longer known. Only now and then they did put a 
head or two upon the spikes of Temple Bar. And 
we, the present-day philosophers, rejoice that even 
that unseemly custom has vanished from amongst us. 
Without more delay we enter the mean but ancient 
bit of archway that leads toward St. Bartholomew- 
the-Great and find ourselves in a fragment of oldest 
London. The fraction of an old, old graveyard lies 
before it and a few Elizabethan-seeming houses 
overhang the graveyard on the left, while on the 
right a tavern called the Coach and Horses, backs 
almost into the very church. Once you enter it you 
are in the middle ages. Norman pillars are visibly 
crumbling and peeling, and as much darkness as 
possible is admitted by windows built in a time when 
windows were out of fashion. With one exception 
it is the oldest church in London — sixty years older 
than the Temple Church. Rahere, who founded this 
church, as well as the hospital, in 1123, has his tomb 
here and so have Sir Walter Mildmay and divers 
other worthies. When last I visited the church, a 
service was in progress in the beautiful and spacious 
choir, and the congregation consisted in exactly two 
nurses from the hospital and one small girl. It may 

[87] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

be mentioned that Franklin when engaged at his 
trade in Little Britain, lived in what is called Bar- 
tholomew Close. Milton lived there before him, Ho- 
garth perhaps later, and Washington Irving con- 
siderably later. You may wander up Cloth Fair, 
a tortuous narrow street, that seems a remnant of 
Elizabethan England, with gabled houses overhang- 
ing so that a plumb-line from the top would swing 
fairly wide of the bottom. Each crazy little story 
projects a little farther forward. There are no 
cloth merchants there now, for they are all about 
St. Paul's. There is, indeed, nothing there now but 
those aged, tottering little houses, awaiting their 
turn to pass into dust. 

And Smithfield itself seems like a footless relic of 
the past, devoted to nothing in particular. It has 
been almost everything, but now it is nothing more 
than a background — or a foreground — to the 
great Central Meat Market. It has been a tilting 
ground (when it must have been called Smooth 
Field), a place of execution, where both William 
Wallace, the Scot, and Wat Tyler, the revolutionist, 
met their death in the fourteenth century ; it has 
been an open fair — Bartholomew's Fair — a med- 
ley of commerce and grotesque amusement. But 
now it is dull and empty, and you skirt it on the 
northeast to pass under the arch of the meat-market 
into Charterhouse Street, on your way to Thack- 
eray's " Greyfriars," forever dear to us. 

[88] 



ST. PAUL'S TO CHARTERHOUSE 

The boys of Charterhouse must have been brought 
up in an aroma of cattle, and it is no wonder Thack- 
eraj^'s Clive Newcome sniffed at " Smiffle." Over 
no spotless pavements you make your way toward 
Charterhouse Square and there by an unassuming 
yellow gate and porter's lodge you stand thrilling 
with expectation. That is where the Carthusian 
Brothers live, and that is where " Cod Colonel " 
Newcome died so pathetically, saying " adsum " when 
his name was called. Something poignantly sharp 
grips your heart, and perhaps you are visited by a 
secret hope that, when your turn comes, you may be 
allowed to say adsum in a place no less peaceful and 
beautiful. 

You see nothing of Brothers or schoolboys when 
first you pass the porter's lodge, under the Gate- 
house, into the entrance court. A dead silence 
reigns over all. The intelligent porter gives you 
ample information about every wall and court, and 
you are provided with a leaflet wherewith to follow 
his itinerary. And once you are in Chapel Cloister 
you see evidences of some of that long distinction 
that makes the fame of a school. 

You see memorial tablets to Thackeray, to John 
Leech, the artist, and to Roger Williams, the founder 
of Rhode Island, the latter due to the gener- 
osity of Mr. Oscar Strauss, of New York. And the 
tablet to John Wesley is gazed upon with reverence 
by many who are not of his persuasion. Long is 

[89] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

the list of distinguished scholars of Charterhouse, 
and it includes besides those above the names of 
Dryden (son of the poet), Sir Henry Havelock, 
George Grote, Crashaw and Blackstone, Addison 
and Steele. The walls of that chapel must have 
seen them all come and pass, since portions of the 
stonework date to 1512 and others to ISl-O. 

An excellent pamplilet sold at the door accurately 
traces the long history of the Chapel and the Char- 
terhouse. Upon the site of a cemetery for victims 
of the plague that raged in London in 1348-9, Sir 
Walter de Manny, a noble knight and a chivalrous, 
built the chapel where masses might be said for the 
souls of the surrounding dead; and subsequently, in 
1371, he founded a Carthusian monastery for twelve 
monks and a Prior. But only the Prior's cell was 
ready when Sir Walter was buried at the foot of 
the altar in the chapel, and Edward Third, John of 
Gaunt and the Black Prince witnessed the interment. 
Despite all that regal patronage, however, Henry 
Eighth dissolved it 166 years later, and sent its 
Prior and most of the Brothers to the gallows at 
Tyburn. It fell into neglect, even dilapidation, un- 
til it was granted as a residence to Sir Edward 
North. It changed hands more or less rapidly 
thereafter, became the property of the Earl of 
Northumberland, once again of Sir Edward North 
and, finally, of the Duke of Norfolk, who was sub- 
sequently beheaded. From the Duke's family, 

[90] 



ST. PAUL'S TO CHARTERHOUSE 

Thomas Sutton, a wise soldier in retirement, ac- 
quired the house in 1611 for £13,000 and created 
the retreat for old gentlemen that it is to-day. 

The Chapel into which the porter leads you, is 
also the tomb of Thomas Sutton ; a curiously carved 
and colored effigy of the bearded captain lies upon 
the sarcophagus, and the face seems very wise, and, 
indeed, what could be wiser than such a foundation? 
To keep in comfort eighty old men who cannot keep 
themselves, the failures in the struggle who would 
feel their defeat most poignantly (for they must 
be " gentlemen " ) ; and forty boys, schooled, 
equipped and nurtured in readiness for the self- 
same struggle. It is only in old countries that you 
find these choice, idiosyncratic benefactions. And 
Charterhouse is doubtless of t^'^ choicest. One is 
surprised to learn that Bacon protested against it. 

" For to design the Charterhouse," he wrote, " a 
building fit to be a Prince's habitation, for an hos- 
pital, is as if one should give in alms a rich em- 
broidered cloak to a beggar." But Bacon's moral 
character, as we know, suffered from other blind- 
nesses as well. And Sutton had his way, and the 
hospital was founded. They show you the Tapestry 
Room, the library, and the Great Hall, where the 
Brothers eat their dinner at two, according to an- 
cient usage. It is the only repast they eat there. 
The other meals are brought them to their " cells," 
very comfortable cells, like college rooms. The last 

[91] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

time I was there it was midwinter, and only two or 
three Brothers in shovel hats and long black gowns 
were strolling about the evergreen Pensioners' Court. 
Theirs seemed an easy simple life, not without dig- 
nity. 

The boys of that foundation, however, are no 
longer at Charterhouse. The school, which also 
had provision for day scholars, grew large and 
populous, and the authorities in 1872 removed it 
to Godalming. The original forty boys provided 
for have now increased to ninety, and the school is 
said to number over five hundred. So that the 
benches provided for them at the foot of the 
founder's tomb are no longer filled by the foun- 
dationers — doubtless to Thomas Sutton's regret. 
Another school, the Merchant Taj'lor's, has bought 
the buildings, and there is still young life on the 
beheaded Duke of Norfolk's tennis court ; and where 
the old cloisters were in Carthusian days is a running 
track with distances marked off in white. 

But though the Charterjiouse School has been 
prospering at Godalming, the lay Brothers have not 
fared so well. Their share of the £200,000 origi- 
nally supplied by Thomas Sutton, has shrunken 
with the agricultural land values and only fifty- 
seven Brothers are now maintained. 

Charterhouse Square, once the Churchyard, is a 
quiet enough circle of houses, and though once an 
abode of fashion, now demands no special attention. 

[92] 



ST. PAUL'S TO CHARTERHOUSE 

But a step away, to the west, we may turn into St. 
John's Lane, and see St. John's Gate, the last relic 
of the priory of the Knights of St. John, as well as 
the church of that name, constituting a part of the 
old priory, and dating back to the twelfth century. 
Thence by Clerkenwell Road, home of jewelers and 
watchmakers, and Old Street, eastward to Bunliill 
Row (Milton once lived there at No. 125), leading 
to the grimy cemetery of Bunhill Fields. I have pur- 
posely kept away from cemeteries until now, be- 
cause I do not delight in visiting them. But Bun- 
hill Fields, though a good half mile away from 
Charterhouse, contains the tombs of two great 
English classic writers, John Bunyan and Daniel 
Defoe. Few who read the English tongue have not 
read the " Pilgrim's Progress," and fewer stiR 
" Robinson Crusoe." This was for nearly three 
centuries the great Nonconformist Cemetery, and 
John Wesley's mother is also buried here. Her 
illustrious son lies just outside this cemetery in the 
little graveyard of Wesley's Chapel, and his house 
at 47 City Road is now maintained as a museum. 
To the northwest of Bunhill Fields stretches the 
populous desert of Islington, a region outside the 
scope of this book, and to the South lies the teeming 
City. 

Or, upon leaving Charterhouse Square we may 
retrace our steps toward Smithfield, into Giltspur 
Street, past Bartholomew's and turn to the right 

[93] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

by the Church of St. Sepulchre, into the Holbom 
Viaduct, past the City Temple and St. Andrew's 
Church, where William Hazlitt was married with 
Charles Lamb as best man; past the vast reddish 
brick buildings of the Prudential Offices, on the site 
of Furnival's Inn, where " Pickwick Papers " was 
begun, to Brooke Street where (No. 39) poor Chat- 
terton killed himself, to Staple Inn again, upon 
which one cannot look too much, and thence to the 
right into Gray's Inn Road and Gray's Inn, where 
the lights may be already blinking, and the great 
quadrangles lie empty and dignified, yet seemingly 
alive with their long and picturesque history. 

In either case, whether you turn from Charter- 
house to Clerkenwell or to Holbom Viaduct, the 
walk takes no more than three hours. And at Chan- 
cery Lane, when you emerge from Gray's Inn, is 
the friendly Tube. 



[94] 



VII 



THE city: some MILTON, SHAKE- 
SPEAEE AND DICKENS LAND 



THE vast network or palimpsest of streets 
called " The City " could very easily fill sev- 
eral volumes in itself. Nothing is more strik- 
ing than the spirit of hurry and bustle that charac- 
terizes its denizens and the ancient landmarks that 
lie all but submerged in this seething modernity. 
The sightseer is here more than elsewhere an inter- 
loper, yet here may be found some of the most inter- 
esting remnants of old London, dating all the way 
back to the Roman occupation. Gingerly one must 
tread one's way about these purlieus, and remember 
that only a very little of the accumulation of riches 
may be seen. Also, one must come here on week- 
days and be jostled, for on Sundays this is a desert 
of stone and mortar, without charm or zest. 

The sudden transition is very odd. So long as 
you are ambling about the paved paths of the little 
enclosure in St. Paul's Churchyard, you are still 
"legitimate." This is undoubtedly the city, and 

[95] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

St. Paul's Churchyard is filled with commercial 
houses. But jou still seem legitimate. But walk 
a step into Cheapside and you appear strange and 
illicit, particularly if you should have a guide-book 
in your hand. Whatever you do, do not pause to 
think that Milton as a child played upon these pave- 
ments — or such pavements as there were in his day. 
There is no time to think. You are more apt to re- 
call Heine's cry when he looked upon them nearly a 
century ago, " Send no poet to London ! " If, how- 
ever, you join the swift procession from the 
top of Paternoster Row and swing into Cheapside 
as though your life depended upon it, or as 
though you were in lower Broadway, New York, 
you are correct and in the movement. John Gilpin, 
who not improbably lived at the comer of Pater- 
noster Row and Cheapside when he undertook 
his celebrated ride, has set the pace that Cheapside 
and the streets clustering about the Bank of England 
maintain to-day. Cheapside leads (via the Poul- 
try) straight into the Bank of England, the great- 
est institution in the British Isles. And if you 
wish to form a rough and ready notion of what is 
significant in the England of to-day, compare the 
atmosphere of St. Paul's at the bottom of Cheap- 
side and that of the Bank at the top of it. You 
will see at once which is the more important temple 
of the two. But that England is not alone in this, 
I need hardly say. 

[96] 



THE CITY 

The last time I walked, or rather flew, in Cheap- 
side, I turned swiftly down the various adjoining 
streets and lanes, so that not the veriest errand- 
boy among them suspected me of landmark-hunting. 
I moved briskly up Foster Lane, on the left, to visit 
the Church of St. Vedast, a Wren product, as 
nearly every London church should be, to see the 
place where the gentle Herrick was baptized in 
1591. St. Vedast's, however, was locked, barred 
and bolted, and by gazing at its door I was remarked 
with suspicion by an errand-boy on a bicycle. I 
walked on to the Goldsmiths' Hall, in the same lane, 
to see a certain Roman altar I had heard of, that 
had been found when the foundations for this Ren- 
aissance palace were being dug. The door-keeper, 
an imposing official in gold lace, absorbed in reading 
by a very comfortable fire in the front hall, told me 
I should have to write for permission first. Outside 
on the bulletin board were announcements of Oxford 
and Cambridge scholarships to be given by the 
Goldsmiths' Company to successful competitors. 
Altogether the building is a picture of opulence 
and you get a new notion of why England has been 
called a nation of shopkeepers. These old guilds 
(and this one dates to 1327) give even now a co- 
herency to business which America lacks. The Sad- 
lers' Hall is near the corner of Foster Lane in 
Cheapside, and a little beyond Is Wood Street with 
the plane-tree that Wordsworth mentions in " Poor 

[97] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

Susan." That tree seems even stranger than the 
sightseer in this region. Across the way some very 
ancient and notable streets run down southward. 

Bread Street, though now completely commercial- 
ized, is sacred to the memory of Milton. At the 
comer of Bread and Watling Streets is a tablet 
with a portrait of Milton in bas-relief commemora- 
ting the Church of All Hallows, torn down in 1878, 
where Milton was baptized. A few steps back, near 
to Cheapside, at what is now No. 63, Milton's father 
carried on the trade of a scrivener, and there the 
poet was born in 1608. A great wholesale shop of 
women's hats now stands upon the site. It is in- 
teresting to compare the knowledge we have concern- 
ing those two poets, Shakespeare and Milton. 
Shakespeare, the professional actor, followed a call- 
ing so comparatively disreputable in those days that 
not even his supreme genius was able to rescue much 
of his history from obscurity. We know almost 
nothing about him. Of Milton, the scholar, bom 
while Shakespeare was yet alive, we know almost 
everything. We know not only where he was born, 
where baptized, and where he lies buried, but we 
know where he was married and remarried, and also 
every one of his dwelling-places. 

Back we go into Cheapside and again we are in 
the stream of traffic that thinks not upon Milton, 
nor yet on Shakespeare. Bow Church alone per- 

[98] 



THE CITY 

haps arrests their gaze, not because Wren built it, 
or because it dates originally to the beginning of 
the Norman Era, but because it has a clock over- 
hanging the pavement that reminds them to hurry. 
One wonders whether this was not a happier region 
in Tudor times or in Stuart, when the cry of " Pren- 
tices and Clubs," brought out from the shops hun- 
dreds of young ruffians with bludgeons to uphold 
their rights — ruffians who afterwards grew into 
great city merchants and Lord Mayors, like Ho- 
garth's industrious apprentice. Pepys recalls one 
of these little Cheapside riots protesting against 
two lads of the 'prentice order being put in the pil- 
lory, and a small apprentice of thirteen informing 
him that it was an unheard of outrage, and one re- 
calls Chaucer's apprentice of Chepe: 

Out of the shop thider would he lepe. 

And til he had all the sight ysein, 

And danced wel, he wold not come agen. 

Chepe certainly seems remote from those times, or 
from the days when a knightly tournament was 
held there, in 1330, to celebrate the birth of the 
Black Prince, or when the conduits ran wine, red 
and white, as in 1312, when a son was born to Ed- 
ward III. One of the nine crosses to Queen Eleanor, 
of which Charing Cross survives, stood here to mark 
the spot where her coffin rested, but the Puritans 

[99] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

pulled it down in Cromwellian times. Every Lord 
Mayor's Show, gilded coaches, scarlet robes and all, 
passes down Cheapside and many a coronation pro- 
cession of old moved down this thoroughfare. 
Henry VIII boldly had his temporary Queen, Anne 
Boleyn, pass down Cheapside and the merchants 
gave her a purse of a thousand marks, whereas 
Queen Elizabeth, a little later, on the way to her 
crowning, received a Bible, which she promised to 
read diligently. I declare, one could go on forever 
with one of these ancient streets, if only the space 
permitted. For tliis is the very heart of London 
(have I not said it leads to the Bank?) and Bow 
Bells have been music to cockney ears for near upon 
a thousand years, and everybody knows how they 
said " Turn again, Whittington " to the future 
Lord Mayor of London! 

Shakespeare and Ben Jonson at the Mermaid 
Tavern that stood in Cheapside between Bread and 
Friday Streets must have heard those bells often 
in the early morning when they broke up after their 
fabled combats of wit in which, so Fuller says, Jon- 
son was the great Spanish galleon, and Shakespeare, 
the nimbler craft, an English man of war. But 
they were all nimble, as we gather from Beaumont's 
famous lines : 

So nimble and so full of subtle flame. 
As if that everyone from whence they came 
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 
[loo] 



THE CITY 

The tavern had an entrance into Friday Street and 
one into Bread Street, and there is a legend that Sir 
Walter Raleigh was the founder of the Mermaid 
Club. It may be mentioned here as well as any- 
where that one of the few facts we know of Chaucer's 
life is from some testimony he gave, that he once 
walked down Friday Street. 

Near the corner of Wood Street, opposite, stands 
that legally protected plane-tree, the last of its race, 
that figures in the Wordsworthian poem of " Poor 
Susan." Those lines, so tempting to the parodist, 
say that — 

At the corner of Wood Street, when day-light appears. 
Hangs a thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years; 
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard 
In the silence of morning the song of the bird. 

I can only say that poor Susan was luckier than I, 
for neither morning nor afternoon have I heard any 
thrush there. We cannot pause on the tradition 
that Keats wrote his sonnet on Chapman's " Ho- 
mer " at No. 71 Cheapside, because It is unsubstan- 
tiated; nor need one linger upon the Sadlers' Hall 
or the Mercers' Hall, for you cannot enter those 
strongholds without a preliminary correspondence. 
But upon turning into King Street on the left you 
come direct to the Guildhall, and that is quite easy 
of access. 

From its name you expect something very fine, 

[lOl] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

imposing, impressive, a building, in short, worthy 
of the Guild of Guilds of the opulent City of Lon- 
don. None of those adjectives apply to the Guildhall. 
It is not even showy ; architecturally it seems a be- 
wildering mixture lacking even the homogeneity of 
the ginger-bread style, which it nevertheless resem- 
bles. After the great, massive, typically English 
buildings you have seen, it seems grotesque. How- 
ever, this outer shell (built 1789) dates to an age 
one does not associate with fine architecture. I say 
the outer shell, because a Guildhall there has been 
here at least since the twelfth century, and in the 
crypt through which you pass on the way to the 
museum, you still see the remains of the original 
building. From the vaulting you would suppose 
that the original Guildhall must have far surpassed 
its present descendant, theoretically the fortress of 
the " City merchant " — a combination of club, 
chamber of commerce, town-hall and much else be- 
sides. The gilded coach of the Lord Mayor, out- 
rider, powdered footman and police escort (with a 
gorgeously costumed figure said to be the Lord 
Mayor inside the coach) begins its procession here, 
and turns up or down Cheapside to show errand 
boys to what they may aspire. I suppose those of 
us who come from overseas, where history, so to 
speak, began afresh, with little of the trappings of 
medisevalism clinging, must always wonder at the 
state of mind of a sensible man who suffers himself 

[102] 



THE CITY 

to be thus apparelled and paraded. But, nHm- 
porte, as the French say. It is a colorful spectacle 
against the London gloom. And a little madness 
leavens life. 

The two wooden giants, Gog and Magog on the 
left as you enter the Great Hall, seem to be another 
remnant of mediaevalism. No one can quite explain 
them. The present ones date to 1708, but as early 
as 1415, when Henry V entered London from South- 
wark, the ancestors of those wooden figures were set 
up on London Bridge holding out the keys of the 
City to him. After the giants there is nothing in 
particular to see in this hall. There are a few typ- 
ically English statues of English heroes. The vast, 
carnivorous City dinners are held in this hall, and 
Pepys, who dined at one of them October 29, 1663, 
complained that only the Lords of the Privy Coun- 
cil had napkins and forks. You may, if you feel 
inclined, receive permission to look in at the Council 
Chamber, and study the coats of arms of the different 
livery companies if you are interested in that species 
of heraldry, or you may descend from the Hall into 
the crypt and join some class of school-children, 
in charge of a teacher, studying civic and national 
history by examining leaden coffins, cinerary urns, 
or other remnants of the Roman occupation ; or, in 
the museum adjoining the crypt, gaze upon ancient 
implements, pottery, ornaments, autograph letters 
from Pepys and Wellington, the sign of Falstaff's 

[103] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

tavern, the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, and so on. 

The library overhead is a magnificent room said 
to contain the finest collection of London history in 
existence, and the Art Gallery adjoining, contains 
some Copleys, a deal of rubbish, historical and oth- 
erwise, and a portrait of Lamb by Hazlitt, which 
Baedeker declines to star. 

Of St. Lawrence Jewry, a church backing into the 
very yard of the Guildhall, I have said nothing, be- 
cause there is nothing — or much — to say. It is 
another beautiful church that seems to remain a 
desolate anachronism in a region that has no need 
of it. Aldermen and City merchants don't come 
to the City to worship — certainly not to worship 
the Lord. In olden times they did; when Bishop 
Tillotson preached here they lived here with their 
families. Now the train and the motor take them 
into the country in forty minutes. And the same 
applies to St. Mary Aldermanbury, a step away 
through Fountain Court, in Aldermanbury, though 
I actually saw a stoutish, red-haired man kneeling 
there in prayer on a certain cloudy afternoon. The 
register of this church records Milton's second mar- 
riage in 1656 to Catherine Woodcock. Down Alder- 
manbury you continue to Fore Street amid an 
ever-increasing bustle, to see St. Giles, Cripplegate, 
and the tomb of Milton. There is a short cut, but 
this way is the best, for in Fore Street you pass 

[104] 



THE CITY 

Milton Street, running off to the right, and that 
street is famous. It is the ancient Grub Street. 

Perhaps the change of name to Milton Street 
was due to the fact that Milton had so many resi- 
dences in this district — in Aldersgate Street, Jewin 
Crescent, Little Britain, Bunhill Fields. But Grub 
Street it is, for all that, and as dreary a thorough- 
fare as doubtless it ever was. Samuel Johnson con- 
sidered it part of the regular education of an 
author to have passed through it, but Swift and 
Pope and, indeed, everyone had nothing but sneers 
for it. It was the home of the lowest type of hack 
and pamphleteer, and many a one was buried by the 
parish. Swift, deriding Pope's caligraphy and fru- 
gality in the use of paper, advised Grub Street 
poets to send their verses to " paper-sparing Pope," 
who Avould joyfully use the margins of their copies 
for his own verses. And, — 

When Pope has filled the margin round 

Why then recall your loan; 
Sell them to Curll for 50 pound. 

And swear they are your own! 

A minute's walk brings you to St. Giles, a hand- 
some, picturesque little church — almost a picture 
church — in what is called the perpendicular style, 
with battlemented walls and a statue of Milton at 
the door. There is no vestibule, you enter the 

[105] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

church from the street and are struck by the sense of 
freedom and the spaciousness that seem to pervade 
it. Yet it is a small, silent City church like so 
many others, but of undoubted antiquity. The 
present building dates to 1545, though the original 
church was built about the year 1090. But for 
illustrious dead this is a little Abbey ; for it contains 
the graves of John Milton (as well as of his father), 
of Foxe, the martyrologist, of Sir Martin Frobisher, 
the navigator, and of some members of the family 
of Lucy, Shakespeare's Lucy, in whose deer preserves 
the poet is believed to have been caught poach- 
ing. Also, the register, which, by the way is 
complete to 1560, informs us that a young brewer 
named Oliver Cromwell, on the 29th of August, 1620, 
was married at St. Giles to one Elizabeth Bourchier. 

The completeness of these records, with their ter- 
rible tale of the plague-year, 1665, served as material 
for Defoe, who dwelt near by, at Barbican, when 
he was writing his almost too convincing narrative 
of the plague epidemic. 

But, of course, the great interest lies in Milton's 
tomb. The actual grave is in front of the altar, 
but the memorial, with a bust of Milton under a 
black oaken canopy, faces the door. It is very 
simple and very awe-inspiring, as the simplicity of 
greatness always is. A few words indicate the date 
of birth and death, and that is all. There are vari- 
ous quaint and ancient memorials in this church, 

[io6] 



THE CITY 

which I need not here dwell upon. That St. Giles* 
holds Milton is enough. 

n. 

After Milton's tomb to find oneself in the Man- 
sion House, is surely a leap from the sublime to the 
ridiculous, yet the Lord Mayor would hardly think 
so. Conducting a police court as he does there in his 
stronghold, I am sure that his power seems to him 
supreme and exhaustless. Before writing this sec- 
tion I made the round once again of this small but 
agitated district, that lies roughly between Corn- 
hill and the Thames, and between the Bank and 
Mansion House and the Tower. But the two pleas- 
antest spots and the finest, too, lie outside those 
boundaries. St. Helen's Church, for instance, is 
in Great St. Helen's Bishopgate, and St. Saviour's 
is in Southwark, just across London Bridge. But I 
know of no way of seeing this portion of the city, 
except by winding in and out among its lanes and al- 
leys and moving up and down in them. 

In the Mansion House there is virtually nothing to 
see. The " State Apartments " shown cannot com- 
pare with the scores of other State apartments vis- 
ible throughout Europe with far less scrutiny, and 
in any case, rooms obviously " palatial " are ab- 
surd. Humanity has no need of Gargantuan tables 
or Gargantuan chairs. Behind the Mansion House 
is the little Church of St. Stephen's Walbrook, which 

[107] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

is certain to be closed whenever you wish to see it. 
Walbrook was really a brook once, and not a very 
clean one. Now it is a narrow street leading down 
to Cannon Street. And where the Mansion House 
stands was a famous market called Lcs Stokkes Mar- 
ket, from a pair of stocks that stood there for of- 
fenders. The present building was erected in 1752. 
Should you wander down from King William Street, 
just east of the Mansion House, into St, Swithin's 
Lane, you may see the true power that dominates the 
City proper. The throne is in New Court, at the sign 
of the Red Shield overhanging the pavement. Here 
are the business premises of the Rothschilds, and 
when I glanced into that trim and spacious court, a 
brougham Avith a coronet on the panels drove in, and 
the doors of the building on the right swung open. 
A footman doffed his silk hat, opened the door of 
the brougham, and gave his arm to a slightly stoop- 
ing old man, with white hair and a friendly counte- 
nance. Between the two porters, each holding open 
half a door, passed in, stooping, smiling, the lord of 
money, N. M. de Rothschild, whose voice carries 
farther than many a European monarch's and whose 
signature is often more weighty. In the gateway 
stood a private detective who watched me narrowly. 
A httle way farther down is St. Swithin's Church 
(of course it is by Wren ; he must have built eighty 
per cent, of all the churches in London) with Lon- 
don Stone built into one of its walls. In Roman days 

[io8] 



THE CITY 

this was presumably the Forum, and distances were 
measured from this stone — the millarium. 

There are many centers of London, but one of 
them is undoubtedly the junction of streets, between 
the Mansion House and the Royal Exchange, the 
Royal Exchange and the Bank. No less than seven 
great thoroughfares radiate outward from this point : 
the Poultry, which is really Cheapside, Queen Vic- 
toria, King William and Lombard Streets, Cornhill, 
Threadneedle and Princes Streets. The Bank of 
England, needless to say, overshadows the Mansion 
House, as well as all else in its neighborhood. It 
is the Bank that has made obsolete all these churches, 
and had Christopher Wren foreseen that the idea 
thrown out in 1694< by William Paterson, the as- 
tute Scotchman, would result in a total eclipse of his 
work, he might have builded with less zeal. Sir 
Christopher died nearly thirty years after the Bank 
was founded, but he could not foresee it. There is a 
notion that the Bank is a government institution, be- 
cause it alone can issue paper money. But, of 
course, it is a joint stock bank, like so many others, 
though the first of that species. Black and win- 
dowless Its stone walls face the Mansion House, face 
Princes Street, face Lothbury, Bartholomew, Thread- 
needle Streets. Where there is so much money, win- 
dows are dangerous, hence this state of siege, a mon- 
ument to the architectural skill of Sir John Soane, 
whose house is a museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields. 
[109] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

The Royal Exchange is another local shrine. It 
is a great hall of emptiness, but on the upper floors 
are the rooms of Lloyd's, where they insure any- 
thing, from a ship to a meteorite, and the noise they 
make about it all might well pass muster in a minor 
American stock exchange. 

Your general direction here is eastward toward 
Aldgate and the Tower, but it is impossible to pre- 
serve a rigid method of exploration. You dodge in 
and out of streets and buildings until your conscience 
is satisfied. For instance, in Comhill near by, you 
glance at No. 41, where the poet Gray was born, 
and into St. Peter's Church, because it is the oldest 
in London. Traditionally, it dates to 179 A. D., 
though the present building was erected by Wren in 
1681. There is little enough to see there now un- 
less you count the keyboard used by Mendelssohn 
when he played here September 30, 1840. The ver- 
ger, or rather the vergeress, is very glad to show 
this one treasure in her charge in the oldest church 
in London. You may, before coming to St. Peter's, 
lose yourself in Change Alley, in order to see the 
site of Garraway's Coffee House, where Defoe, who 
kept a hosier's shop near by in Freemason's Court, 
was a frequenter. But the present building on the 
site is most disillusionizing. And south of Lombard 
Street is Plough Court, where Pope was bom. Up 
Bishopsgate on the left from Comhill, you walk into 
Great St. Helen's, than which there is no pleasanter 

[no] 



THE CITY 

spot to rest for a moment. Returning to Leadenhall 
Street, you may at the corner of Lime Street, see 
the site of the India House that supported James 
Mill, his son John Stuart Mill, and of course Charles 
Lamb, who so wisely made up for beginning his of- 
fice hours late by ending them early. 

Lombard Street, once the home of the collectors 
of the papal revenues and later of their successors, 
the Italian bankers, who took the place of the Jew- 
ish bankers expelled in the thirteenth century, is a 
street of bankers still. In its Church of St. Ed- 
mund's, King and Martyr, Addison in 1716 con- 
tracted his high marriage with the Dowager Countess 
of Warwick, which we know did not bring him much 
happiness. Descending Gracechurch Street from 
Lombard, we come upon the Monument and the en- 
trance to London Bridge. I have doubtless omitted 
many of the churches in the region, but my con- 
science is untroubled. It would take a fanatic to 
" do " them all. 

I see I have brought up sharp at the Monument 
as though I intended to write a chapter upon it, but 
that is hardly necessary. The Monument is simply 
a very tall column (202 feet high) put up by Wren 
in 1677 to commemorate the Great Fire of 1666, so 
often mentioned. On the top of this column gilded 
flames most unrealistically leap heavenward. If you 
ascend the 345 steps you may get a fine view of the 
river. But few are the enthusiasts that ascend them. 

[Ill] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

Fishmongers' Hall at the approach to the bridge, Is 
another monument — to the fish trade — gray and 
dark and beautiful, the richly shaded London color, 
and you cannot help marveling naively that the 
Guild of Fishmongers who could put up that hall 
should be in essence one with the chaffering, noisy 
tribe under the bridge, on the opposite side, who con- 
stitute the soul of Billingsgate. There are still 
some " ladies disposing of fish " at this famous gate, 
but chiefly there are men and horses (including don- 
keys) and the smell of fish that send up their salute 
to you as you lean over the parapet of the bridge 
and look down upon them. Resolutely you conclude 
that that experience is enough, and without listening 
for the celebrated language, you march on across the 
busy bridge to the Borough towards St. Saviour's, 
now known as Southwark Cathedral. 

So far as the sightseer is concerned Southwark (or 
Sothark, as it is pronounced) contains only two or 
three points of interest, but they are of capital im- 
portance. And the greatest of these is St. Saviour's 
because it is still comparatively intact, despite reno- 
vations. A whole county of Dickens Land lies far- 
ther down along the High Street, but St. Saviour's 
might be called the Church of the Dramatists. It 
dates far enough back, however, to hold the tomb 
of the poet Gower, contemporary of Chaucer, whom 
the verger calls Chaucer's teacher. Well, we all 
learn from each other, so we may let that pass. The 

[112] 




Copyright hy Stereo-Trax'el Co. 



St. Saviour's Church 



THE CITY 

original nave was built by Gifford, Bishop of Win- 
chester, so early as 1106. A hundred years later, 
another Bishop of Winchester built the Choir and 
Lady Chapel which (bar repairs) survive to this day. 
The nave was rebuilt in 1896, but in admirable taste, 
and in the style of the original. Altogether this is 
a church of harmony, and it has need to be, for be- 
sides the tomb of Gower it has on the opposite 
(south) side of the nave a monument in marble with 
a reclining alabaster figure to William Shakespeare, 
so long a resident of tliis parish — " a tribute from 
English and American admirers," the inscription 
reads. The windows of Massinger, Fletcher and 
Beaumont follow Shakespeare's along the wall. 
After Beaumont's is a window to Edward Alleyn, 
player, who was a churchwarden here in 1610. It 
shows that despite the low legal status of the actor 
at that time (and, indeed, until to-day), of a va- 
grant, he must have been held in some esteem, never- 
theless, to be a churchwarden and to found a school ; 
for Alleyn founded Dulwich College. Facing all 
these, in the north wall, are windows to Goldsmith, 
Dr. Johnson, Dr. Sacheverell, Bunyan, Chaucer, and 
also the monument to Gower. There are divers other 
quaint and ancient monuments here including Tre- 
heai'ne " Gentleman-porter " to King James I — 
whatever a Gentleman-porter may have been, and 
a certain crusader. But the one tomb that I hold 
it a duty to pay one's respects to, is that of Bishop 

[113] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

Lancelot Andrews, a modest and saintly man who 
was one of the translators of the Authorized Ver- 
sion. He lies in the ancient Lady Chapel, which is 
very dark and very peaceful. Massinger, Fletcher 
and Edmund Shakespeare, a brother of William, are 
also buried here, but the location of their graves is 
uncertain. 

Americans may be said to have a home at St. 
Saviour's, for the Harvard Chapel was created by 
them to commemorate the baptism here of John Har- 
vard on the 29th of November, 1607. I saw a fac- 
simile of the entry, and it is of the briefest. " John 
Harvard, son of Robt. Harvard," and this Robt. 
Harvard in 1610 was a churchwarden of St. Sav- 
iour's, and thus a colleague of the actor Alleyn. 
The verger feels that that contact must have in- 
fluenced John Harvard in Massachusetts to found 
our great University by example, for he must have 
heard there that Alleyn was founding Dulwich in 
England. There is a strange flavor about those 
benefactions by poor, or comparatively poor, men. 
For Robert Harvard was a tavern-keeper, Alleyn an 
actor, and John Harvard a poor clergyman. Nowa- 
days it seems to require a hundred millions or so of 
superfluity before men will found colleges. I should 
add, that to Mr. William Phillips, formerly secretary 
of the American Embassy in London, now Regent of 
Harvard, is due the opening of the Harvard Chapel 
— to which Mr. Choate contributed the window. 

[114] 



THE CITY 

Mr. Robert Bacon provided a Visitors' Book where 
Harvard men, presumably (for there is a space for 
" class "), to enter their names. But the Harvard 
names are lost amid the multitude of signatures from 
Kennington, Whitechapel, Chicago and intermediate 
points on the map. 

What remains of Southwark to be seen is less ac- 
cessible than the Cathedral. For instance, a part 
of Barclay and Perkins' Brewery (of which Dr. 
Johnson's friend Thrale was originally one of the 
owners) stands upon the site of Shakespeare's 
Theatre, the Globe, where so many of the plays were 
produced, and so much of the poet's success made. 
It is in Park Street, perhaps a quarter mile from 
the church and a fine bronze tablet records the fact 
that " Here stood the Globe Playhouse of Shake- 
speare 1598-1603." In Thomas Street, on the way 
thither, one may turn down far enough to catch a 
glimpse of Guy's Hospital, which a bookseller, who 
actually achieved wealth in South Sea speculation, 
founded in 1731. John Keats studied medicine 
there, and must have often trodden the streets that 
Shakespeare walked in two centuries before him. 
The White Hart, where the best of masters, Mr. 
Pickwick, first met the best of servants, Samuel 
Weller, son of Tony (it sounds like a roll-call in 
Valhalla!) has now disappeared from its place (No. 
61) in the Borough High Street, though I see 
the rooms of the Samuel Weller Social Club are on the 

[115] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

site. But at No. 77, a little to the south, stands the 
George Hotel, as genial an old inn as the White 
Hart must have been. A little further away, at No. 
85, is the Tabard Inn, descendant (very modern 
descendant) of Chaucer's Tabard's Inn, point of de- 
parture for the Canterbury Pilgrims. The Church 
of St. George, further down the High Street, is fa- 
miliar to readers of " Little Dorrit," and its church- 
yard holds many dead of the old Marshalsea Prison, 
which stood near by. And if you wander all the 
way to Lambeth you may even see Bedlam, or the 
Bethlehem Royal Hospital for Lunatics. But it is 
best to return across London Bridge and catch an- 
other glimpse of the mediaeval turrets upon the 
Tower Bridge^ a short distance down the river. 



[ii6] 



VIII 

THE TOWER 

IF you go on to the Tower from London Bridge, 
by way of Lower Thames Street, to which a 
stairway leads from Adelaide Place, the bridge 
entrance, you may look into the old and beautiful 
church of St, Magnus Martyr (by Wren), where 
Miles Coverdale, the first translator of the complete 
English Bible once officiated as rector, and where he 
now lies buried. There, in the heart of Billingsgate, 
this fine mellow church is crumbling on through the 
centuries, without striking incongruity. Tlie last 
time I visited the Tower, I walked this way through 
Billingsgate, turned up St. Dunstan's Hill, past St. 
Dunstan's-in-the-East (also by Wren), and thence, 
by Great Tower Street, and past All Hallows Bark- 
ing, to Great Tower Hill. All Hallows Barking 
deserves a visit, if onlj'' because that great spirit 
William Penn was baptized within it. The Bishop 
Lancelot Andrews, whose tomb we saw in Southwark 
Cathedral, was also baptized here, and John Quincy 
Adams was married at All Hallows on July 26th, 
1797, to Louisa Catherine Johnson. From Tower 
Hill, a step eastward, where so many famous heads 

[117] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

were severed, the remains that were carried to All 
Hallows Church included those of Archbishop Laud 
and the Earl of Surrey. The church escaped the 
fire of 1666, and by consequence much of its me- 
diaeval architecture and many ancient brasses re- 
main intact. Near the church stands a tavern, 
called the Czar's Head, which Peter the Great fre- 
quented (not the same building, of course) when he 
was learning to build ships in England. 

The more normal way of arriving at the Tower, 
however, would be from the Mark Lane Undergr'ound 
station, opposite this Church of All Hallows, which 
would eliminate the walk through Billingsgate. The 
few costers and policemen who now generally occupy 
Tower Hill, and the public coffee-bar with coffee ever 
so cheap, may seem less picturesque than the scaffold 
that parted from their heads the two Dudleys, the 
Duke of Northumberland (1553), who owned Char- 
terhouse but who never dwelt in it ; the poet Earl of 
Surrey and his son Norfolk (1572) who did live in 
Charterhouse, Sir Thomas More, and Bishop Fisher, 
not to mention the Scotch Lords (Lovat as late as 
1747), but if these noble and revered heads could now 
revisit the Hill they would no doubt approve of the 
landscape even in its degeneration. 

It is only the Hill, however, that may be said to 
have degenerated. For the Tower itself, rising high 
and majestic, with turrets, flags and pinnacles, bas- 
tions, battlements and castellated walls, is a spectacle 

[ii8] 



THE TOWER 



for the gods. It seems almost as remote from the 
twentieth century as the Tower of Babel would be 
in the middle of Whitechapel Road. When you see 
that brave pile (as such things used to be called), 
you forget completely that Whitechapel lies some- 
where, not very far, to the east, and the City im- 
mediately to the west. You think of all that dead 
and gone era of the knighthood and chivalry of both 
Amadis de Gaul and reality, an era which seemed so 
preposterous even to Cervantes, which seems so in- 
credibly preposterous to us of to-day. Yet, the 
Tower and much of its contents testify to the grim 
actuality of that bygone age, and unless your blood 
is frozen by some of the instruments of torture in 
the Armory, you cannot help laughing inwardly at 
the folly of mankind, that has always taken itself 
with so much pompous and absurd seriousness. 
From every point of view the Tower is a thing to be 
seen. It is tonic. It makes you feel what fine fel- 
lows we ane in that we no longer behead, throw into 
dungeons, or crush to a jelly the thumbs of people 
who differ in matters of faith. We do, indeed, look 
with complacency on machine guns and their work, 
but machine guns, notably our own machine guns, are 
different. And some day, perhaps, we shall pass 
through a gate and take a ticket for them even as 
now for the Tower. 

Of course, the Tower is not all armory, but it is 
natural to regard instruments of torture and weapons 

[119] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

of death with warm interest. The architectural 
glamour of the place is unique In England and his- 
torically, I suppose, its interest is unsurpassed for 
English-speaking people. All the separate towers 
and buildings are plainly labeled, making the walls 
and grounds themselves the items of a sort of huge 
exhibit. The moat requires no label, for any reader 
of " Ivanhoe " would immediately know its uses and 
imagine it flooded. It is now white and dry, and the 
last time I saw it, some soldiers of the little garrison 
were playing football upon its bed. But it is a com- 
fort to think that it could be flooded still, and that 
one day some imaginative Governor of the Tower 
will do it for our edification. 

Sir Walter Raleigh was, I suppose, admitted with- 
out a ticket, but now you must, even on free days, 
obtain a ticket at the office near the Lion's Gate, 
where of old was the Lion Tower, a part of the 
menagerie removed to Regent's Park. Edward Al- 
leyn, the actor, he who according to the verger of St. 
Saviour's is supposed to have indirectly influenced 
John Harvard to found Harvard College, was at one 
time keeper- of the menagerie, and that is how he is 
said to have amassed the money to found Dulwich 
with. It seems a more likely way than acting — in 
these days. An excellent guide purchased for a 
penny at the gate gives in large type the names and 
descriptions of the various towers you pass on the 
way to Wakefield Tower, where the Crown Jewels 

[120] 



THE TOWER 



are kept. On the right is the river and Traitors' 
Gate, where so many of the finest spirits of England 
landed to enter these precincts of gloom and death. 
Edward, Duke of Buckingham, Sir Thomas More, 
Anne Boleyn, Queen Katherine Howard, Lady Jane 
Grey, Devereux, Earl of Essex, the Duke of Mon- 
mouth — what a roll-call ! All passed under that 
broad and sinister archway, and strangely enough, 
Elizabeth, afterwards Queen, who so loved to punish 
others, herself landed at Traitors' Gate as a prisoner. 
The whole place breathes of mystery and romance, 
even to this day, when little detachments of soldiers 
in khaki parade before your eyes and tourists strag- 
gle about, guide-book in hand. Yet Harrison Ains- 
worth could have chosen no fitter background for a 
novel than the Tower of London. There, opposite 
that very Traitors' Gate stands the gloomy masonry 
of Bloody Tower, where Richard III had the little 
Princes done to death, as we believe, and as by this 
sword I undertake to maint — dear me ! I am for- 
getting the tourists and the mild beef-eaters on guard. 
But the very walls, the very name of the Tower, re- 
call strange and vanished figures of speech and long- 
forgotten boyish thrills of the blood. The lines, 
the very stage directions of " Richard III " recur to 
the mind : " Enter the Two Murderers" " Enter 
Gloucester and Buckingham, in rotten armour, mar- 
vellous ill-favoured," " Enter Lovel and Ratcliff, with 
Hastings^ head" or, — 

[121] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

First Murd. Take that, and that: if all this will not do, 

(stabs him) 
I'll drown you in the malmsey-butt within 

(Exit, with the body). 

The Crown Jewels and other implements of sov- 
ereignty, in the past so costly in blood to maintain, 
are now very peacefully exhibited (suffragettes per- 
mitting) in the Wakefield Tower near by. There is 
no need to rhapsodize over these regalia though they 
are worth seeing. A " fine ruby given to the Black 
Prince by Peter the Cruel," April 3rd, 1367, as the 
penny guide informs us, is of course more seeing- 
worth (in the German phrase) than merely a fine 
ruby. St. Edward's Staff, King John's Anointing 
Spoon, Queen Elizabeth's " Salt " and many more 
such knick-knacks are here to be seen, besides the 
Crowns and Coronets, that are said to compare un- 
favorably with kind hearts. The mild Lancastrian 
King, Henry VI, is said to have been murdered here 
by Gloucester, who, in Shakespeare's words, had 
*' neither pity, love, nor fear." Murdered or not, 
however, the Crown Jewels are silent on the matter. 
The White Tower, the next station in the usual 
itinerary of the visitor, is the oldest portion of the 
fortress. King Alfred's bastions built here in 885 
were successors to some Roman fortifications, and 
William the Conqueror proceeded to build a Keep 
here in 1078. The roll of Kings and noble prison- 
ers, who have occupied the White Tower, either as 

[122] 



THE TOWER 



palace or as prison, would fill a whole Almanach ide 
Gotha. It seems a picturesque fact that Long- 
champ, Richard Coeur de Lion's Regent, enlarged 
and inhabited the Tower until King John took it 
away from him in 1191. It is easy to see that the 
romantic Richard's talents lay not in the domain of 
administration. He was King of England for one 
decade, yet he had to get Longchamp to do his ruling 
for him, while he careered about the world, hob and 
nobbed with Saladin and " did " time in a German 
prison. The history of " La Blanche Tour " is a 
long one, and I cannot here trace it out or name all 
the Childe Rolands that to this White Tower came, 
but I must not omit to mention that Christopher 
Wren, who built almost everything in London except 
the Tubes, which he left to the late Charles T. Yerkes, 
had a hand in the Tower as well. In 1709 he put in 
the present windows to admit more light than Norman 
barons were accustomed to in their castles. This 
Castle shows clearly how any Norman King's or gen- 
tleman's house could also be his enemy's prison. 
Home was not home unless it could serve as a jail for 
rivals and brothers if need were. 

St. John's Chapel, to which you are admitted be- 
fore visiting the armory, seems startlingly new and 
fresh at first sight, and yet, it was mentioned as 
early as 1189. The walls of this Chapel, so cold and 
so gray, and the massive stone pillars and gallery, 
show what homes these strongholds made. Even now 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

England is incredibly uncomfortable in winter for 
lack of proper heating apparatus. At that time, to 
use the words of Mr. Loftie's penny guide, in spite 
of the use of wooden partitions and tapestry, it 
" must have been miserable as a place of residence." 
The Royal Residence that once adjoined this Chapel 
and Tower was pulled down by Cromwell, and only a 
fragment of it remains in the detached Wardrobe 
Tower. 

The Armories housed in the White Tower are, aside 
from the regalia, the exhibit in the Tower. They 
include, I should say, a fairly complete encyclopedia, 
in concrete form, of all imaginable and unimaginable 
instruments of death and torture. Considerable 
esthetic taste has gone to the arrangement of these 
things and you see great roses, rosettes and other 
forms made of glittering polished swords, bayonets, 
cutlasses, sabers, what not. The collection was be- 
gun by that broad-minded monarch, Henry VIII, and 
has been added to during virtually every subsequent 
reign. From the musket of the year one, you may 
go back to the arquebus or forward to the mauser. 
The figures, mounted or otherwise, in armor of a 
vast range of workmanship, make the upper story of 
the White Tower a museum of chivalry. But there 
are many other things in this Tower besides arms and 
armor. A model of the rack, a thumbscrew, the 
Duke of Wellington's uniform when Constable of the 
Tower, the cloak Wolfe wore when he died at Quebec, 

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THE TOWER 



the drums of Blenheim, King Edward's funereal gun- 
carriage, and so on. It is useless to itemize, but 
intenesting to see. 

What remains of the visible parts of the Tower, 
is sad with memorials of death and cruelty. On 
Tower Green, near to the Parade, upon which you 
emerge from the White Tower, is the spot where the 
scaffold stood, and Beauchamp Tower is eloquent 
with the names of those who were confined therein: 
the four Dudleys, Philip Howard Arundel, Geoffrey 
Pole, "Thomas Talbot, 1462," and Dr, Thomas 
Abel, faithful servant of Katherine of Aragon, 
Henry VHI's discarded Queen. And the chapel of 
St. Peter ad Vincula, mentioned as early as 1210, is 
a veritable cemetery of queens and noblemen. This 
chapel, included in the places accessible only upon 
obtaining a pass from the Governor of the Tower 
to Raleigh's prison, Guy Fawkes' prison, etc., is nev- 
ertheless sometimes shown upon request by the warder. 
Lord Hastings, who was executed on Tower Green in 
1483, Queen Anne Boleyn in 153G, Countess Margaret 
Salisbury, the last of the Plantagenets, 1541, Queen 
Katherine Howard, fifth wife of Henry VIII, 1542, 
Jane, Viscountess Rochford, 1542, Lady Jane Grey, 
1554, and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, 1601 — 
all were buried in the chapel of St. Peter. To them 
this historical museum that we straggle about to see, 
was a wall of death or the gate of life, according to 
the state of their souls. 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

Just as in Walpole's day all that lay west of Hyde 
Park Corner was a desert, so to the London City 
man of to-day all that stretches beyond Aldgate 
or the Tower is a wilderness. WhitechapeJ sends a 
member to Parliament, and the docks and their in- 
habitants figure amusingly in the tales of W. W. 
Jacobs. But essentially they are regions beyond the 
ken of man. I need hardly say that to anyone who 
takes the trouble to visit Whitechapel and Mile End 
Road, their importance and vitality will very soon 
be apparent. They are a world by themselves, a 
swarming, busy, active world, aggressive and pro- 
gressive, indifferent yet enormously interested. Mr. 
Zangwill has described it once for all in " Children 
of the Ghetto." Others, too, have described it. But 
in this book it would be out of place. The visitor 
who steps out of the Underground at St. Mary's, 
Whitechapel, will be astonished to find himself in the 
heart of a wholly new London, but it is a London to 
which I cannot guide him. With a last look, there- 
fore, at the Tower, at the Royal Mint, at Trinity 
House, we leave this region as a kind of Pillars of 
Hercules, and hasten back to the West End, which 
to the dweller in Whitechapel or Houndsditch is re- 
mote to unreality. 



[126] 



IX 

WHITEHALL AND WESTMINSTER 

TO walk from Charing Cross down WhItehaU 
and its continuation. Parliament Street, to 
Westminster Abbey, is to pass through the 
heart of Kipling's England. Waterloo may have 
been won on the playing-fields of Eton, and to the 
Englishman's loyalty is doubtless due the fact that 
the sun never sets on the British Empire. But if the 
heart of that Empire Is not here in Westminster, it 
is nowhere. The concrete group of Government of- 
fices gives one a strange feeling of human pride. 
After all, you say, these are only a few buildings, 
populated, during office hours, by a few thousand 
men, yet from this half mile (or less) of street, is 
ruled so large a portion of the habitable globe, that 
other nations complain of a lack of places in the sun. 
From the Roman Forum radiated roads to the con- 
fines of the Empire. From the Admiralty in White- 
hall, by means of the wireless installation we see on 
the roof, messages are flashed to obedient Dread- 
noughts in distant seas. That is better than Rome 
could do, and quite deserving of Mr. Kipling's poetry. 
And though one regrets having to compare England 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

to Rome so often, England is nevertheless still Eng- 
land, and far from the case of Rome. But this street 
gives you a notion of how the average Roman felt 
when he walked through the Forum. He must have 
felt proud. This is not the Forum, yet it is magnif- 
icent. But it is not spectacular. 

The Admiralty Arch, which forms the gateway 
from Charing Cross to St. James's Park, is less an 
arch than a set of office rooms belonging to the Ad- 
miralty. Every French journalist, with the well- 
known French taste for generalization, no doubt says 
to himself when first he observes this phenomenon, 
that to go to Buckingham Palace you pass under the 
rooms of the Admiralty. The windows of Bucking- 
ham face the wireless installation ; symbolically the 
King, himself a sailor, forever contemplates his Navy. 
And that is largely true. If Whitehall is the heart 
of Britain, the Admiralty is its vital principle. You 
cannot take up an English newspaper in this present 
year of grace without perceiving the immense concern 
of England for her navy. Two keels to one, gifts 
of Dreadnoughts by the Colonies, these are the great- 
est preoccupations of England. And the office space 
of the Admiralty is simply enormous. It extends 
into Trafalgar Square by the Arch, far into St. 
James's Park behind, and fronts upon Whitehall 
with four tall columns, and one of those gray and 
glamourous fa9ades so distinctive of London. This 
and the Horse Guards, with its gray clock tower form 

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WHITEHALL AND WESTMINSTER 

together the most picturesque part of Whitehall. 
Both were built in the eighteenth century, which has 
given them ample time to acquire the national color 
of gray. Of perennial interest are the two mounted 
Life Guards at the Horse Guards, with their red 
coats, shining harness and horse-hair plumes. In 
Berlin, Vienna or St. Petersburg no one would give 
them a thought. There, bizarre and chromatic uni- 
forms are common. But for Englishmen it is always 
a little startling to see fellow Englishmen dressed as 
for a mask ball. It is even more so for those of us 
who come from simpler and more democratic coun- 
tries and colonies overseas. So that a beef-eater in 
the Tower, a Life-Guard on a black charger, a Lord 
Mayor in his robes, are positively thrilling phenom- 
ena, mainly because they, too, speak English, and 
are not mere foreigners, to whom masquerading in 
fancy dress is an everyday natural occurrence. 

These two buildings and the Banqueting Hall 
opposite give all the color to Whitehall. The others 
are mere oflSce warrens of a very modern pattern, 
without interest except for the chiefs that rule them. 
But the banqueting hall suddenly takes you back to 
the England of the Tudors, to the England of the 
Stuarts, to Cromwellian days. One is surprised 
Cromwell did not tear it down, since a Stuart built 
it. The particular Stuart was James I, and it was 
to be the regeneration of the ancient Palace of White- 
hall, occupied by Henry VIII before the days of St. 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

James's. Instead, however, it virtually served as a 
scaffold for King James's son, Charles I, for out of 
the second window from the north of this hall Charles 
marched to his death the morning of January 30, 
1649. Whitehall Palace, so often mentioned in 
Shakespeare's histories, was therefore never rebuilt, 
and the hall alone remains. It is a military and 
naval museum now, and the shrewd old soldier who 
guides you about it happens to think contemptu- 
ously of Stuarts. I remember one day borrowing his 
mirror in order to examine the fine ceiling by Rubens, 
which represents the Apotheosis of James I. 

*' That, sir," commented the old soldier, " repre- 
sents James I going to Heaven — as if," he added 
. in a whisper, " a Stuart could get to Heaven ! " 
Verily, sic transit! Charles I conferred knighthood 
upon Rubens and paid him highly for painting this 
ceiling, which was to glorify his race, but from under 
it he merely walked to his death. A tablet outside 
shows where the scaffold was erected — that much, 
at least, is left of the Stuarts at Wliitehall. But 
what of the Archbishops of York who owned York 
House for 250 years before Henry VIII arranged 
to " take it over " from Wolsey — that prelate of 
fabulous wealth, who gleamed with red and gold and 
scarlet, from whose shoes glittered precious dia- 
monds? What of Henry VIII himself and of Anne 
Boleyn, whom he married here January 25, 1533? 

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WHITEHALL AND WESTMINSTER 

Nothing remains of them except their memory, and 
that not glorious. Charles II lived here gayly for a 
time, but two fires, one in 1691 and another in 1697, 
swept away all the old part of Whitehall and no one 
rebuilt it. No more banquets here, such as James I 
gave to the Spanish Ambassador, whilst the populace 
admitted to look on, were crying: "Peace! Peace! 
Peace I God save the King ! " After which pious 
prayer there was bear-baiting and " excellent bull- 
baiting." The very cockpit of Henry VIII is oblit- 
erated. Yet you hear people maintain that human 
morals do not progress ! 

The implements of death in the Tower would nor- 
mally be considered a sufficient exhibit of the kind 
for one city. But London enjoys the special priv- 
ilege of the Royal United Service Museum as well. 
Here, housed in the banqueting hall, you see machine- 
guns, Maxims, shell and shrapnel, exquisite models 
of the most modem forms of killing in large num- 
bers. You see a gun made of a drain-pipe by some 
besieged soldiers of Ladysmith, and you see mortars 
that were too ambitious to live. Any subaltern or 
club-smoking-room tactician can study strategy by 
models of the battle of Waterloo or the fight at Traf- 
algar, and all can seek inspiration from the relics 
of General Wolfe, Napoleon, Wellington, Sir John 
Moore, or Sir John Franklin, the polar hero ; and 
soon there will be relics of that other polar hero of 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

our own time, Captain Scott. The place is well 
worth visiting, and even Mr. Norman Angell can 
gain information and arguments there. 

I have said nothing of ihe War Office, across 
Horse Guards' Avenue from the museum, because 
there is nothing to say. But a tranquil crescent 
of houses behind the banqueting hall is Whitehall 
Gardens. Peel lived (and died) there in 1850 at 
No. 4, as a tablet indicates ; and Disraeli dwelt at 
No. 2, 1873 to 1875, as no tablet indicates, which 
is regrettable. But that house is now the head- 
quarters of the Imperial Defense Committee, and 
that in itself is a kind of monument to " Dizzy," 
for did he not give England a great part of her 
Empire? Montague House, the town house of the 
Duke of Buccleuch, and Richmond Terrace continue 
Whitehall beyond the banqueting hall, and opposite 
are the offices of the Scottish Lord Advocate, the 
Treasury and the Privy Council buildings to Down- 
ing Street. 

Downing Street, I am bound to say, the very name, 
has always aroused in me a certain thrill of emo- 
tion. From No. 10 of that street is governed the 
British Empire. I was prepared to see a palace. 
I was disappointed to find a simple, three-storied 
house, of Georgian blackened brick, such as any 
fairly paid journalist might inhabit. But one's dis- 
appointment is only for a moment. Surely it is 
magnificent that the head of the Government, the ac- 

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WHITEHALL AND WESTMINSTER 

tual ruler, the Prime Minister of England should live 
thus modestly and leave the palaces to South African 
and other millionaires ! And the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer lives in a precisely similar house adjoin- 
ing at No. 11. One policeman is on duty before both 
houses. It is so simple and so fine that citizens of 
distant republics who think on palaces may well look 
here for inspiration. It is odd, by the way, that 
the very name of the street is that of an American, 
George Downing, who was Ambassador to The Hague 
under Cromwell and Charles II. Sir Robert Wal- 
pole did a fine thing when he urged George II to 
make 10 Downing Street the Prime Minister''s house 
forever. One wonders what Boswell, once a resident 
in this street, thought of it all, and what Dr. Johnson 
said. 

The vast building of the Foreign, Colonial, India 
and Home offices extends from Downing clean to 
Charles, along Parliament Street, and the Board of 
Education and Local Government Board complete 
the street. Opposite is New Scotland Yard, head- 
quarters of the finest police system in the world. 
No one who comes to England, from whatever coun- 
try, but must find that his own police compares ill 
with London's. What makes these stalwart men 
so much more courteous and quick and cheerful than 
their brother blue-coats of New York, than the brood- 
ing agents of Paris, or the tense, irate poUzisten of 
Berlin? No one has been able to answer this query 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

satisfactorily ; yet no Londoner, resident or visitor, 
but feels himself in their debt. 

And so we are at the end of Whitehall — Parlia- 
ment Street, but I cannot pretend to have described 
it. The broad and noble sweep of it, the haze that 
overhangs it even in bright sunshine, the curved line 
of motor 'buses bowling along towards Westminster, 
with ample margin on either hand, the Government 
buildings, even the equestrian statue of the Duke 
of Cambridge — all of these fall into a truly beauti- 
ful harmony, peculiar to London, peculiar to Eng- 
land, yet rare, unique. The towers and spires of 
Westminster make a fitting goal for that broad high- 
way. 

Delightful is the sense of breadth and space you 
get in the region of the Abbey. The towers of St. 
Margaret's Church and the Abbey, Big Ben on the 
left and the Victoria Tower at the far end of the 
Parliament buildings, all form a noble prospect, 
which the green enclosure with the statues of Peel 
and Palmerston, Derby and Beaconsfield only enhance. 
But it was not always so. Some of the worst slums 
in London once lay in Westminster. Members of 
Parliament and suitors in the law courts (for an- 
ciently the law courts were here) were the only 
decent citizens of the region. The people were on 
one occasion described as " of no trade or mystery, 
poor and wholly given to vice and idleness." It was 
a great place for " fences " and receivers, and in 

[134] 




Copyright by Stereo-Travfl Co. 

Westminster Bridg^e, showing '*Big Ben" 



WHITEHALL AND WESTMINSTER 

James First's time every fourth house was " an ale- 
house harbouring all sorts of lewd and badde peo- 
ple." 

Yet there was always much sanctity about the 
place, for even St. Margaret's, the parish church 
that stands facing you north of the Abbey, was 
(traditionally) founded by Edward the Confessor, 
and is at least eight hundred years old. As for the 
Abbey, Sebert, the Saxon King, is said to have 
founded it as early as 616, and in the Chapter House 
you may actually see the document (dated 978) by 
which King Edgar granted the Abbey " five hides of 
land," though, of course, Edward the Confessor is 
the real creator of the Abbey. But even that is 
nine hundred years ago. Nevertheless a low popu- 
lation gathered round the sacred places, round the 
Sanctuary that stood beyond the Abbey, and where 
now lie the trim streets, once lay chaos. It was per- 
haps as well for these " lewd and badde people '* 
not to be too far away from Sanctuary. But in the 
light of these facts the cry at the end of the daily 
session of Parliament, "Who goes home?" is not 
surprising. Members were afraid to go home in the 
dark, and walked in troops with lanthoms and link- 
boys. We remember that many of the Paternoster- 
ers round St. Paul's were no less rascals than those 
surrounding the Abbey. I cannot explain it. 

But to return to St. Margaret's. Its proximity 
to the Abbey often causes it to be neglected by vis- 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

itors. Yet it contains the tomb and effigy of Sir 
Walter Raleigh with this appealing inscription, in 
itself deserving homage : " Reader, should you re- 
flect on his errors, Remember his many virtues. And 
that he was a mortal." At crowded Sunday services 
the chairs of the worshipers surround the kneeling 
effigy of Sir Walter and the noble knight seems very 
humble and devout in his attitude. Milton's second 
marriage took place here, and the wife of that mar- 
riage, as well as her infant daughter, lie buried be- 
neath this church. Two other English poets were 
married here. Waller and Thomas Campbell, to say 
nothing of Samuel Pepys, whose wife and whose life 
we come to know so well in the diary. But to know 
Pepys we must go to the Pepysian library, at ]Mag- 
dalcne College, Cambridge. The Dons of that ex- 
cellent little college are very kind to students of 
Pep3'siana, though I believe they deplore the diarist's 
morals. St. Margaret's possesses a fine stained-glass 
window, representing the Crucifixion, with a romantic 
history. The town of Dordrecht, Holland, presented 
it to Henry YII, but Henry VIII, who inherited it 
before its recipient could erect it, gave it to Waltham 
Abbey, Avhich he soon thereafter dissolved. It passed 
through many hands subsequently, including Queen 
Elizabeth's, Oliver Cromwell's and General Monk's. 
It was buried during the Revolution for fear of the 
Roundheads, and later disinterred. But not till 
1758 did it find its place at St. Margaret's. There 

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WHITEHALL AND WESTMINSTER 

are many more modern windows here to Caxton (who 
is buried in the church), to Milton (gift of George 
W. Childs), to Raleigh, and to Phillips Brooks, pro- 
vided by Americans, to Sir Thomas Erskine May, 
and so on. The walls are covered with ancient mon- 
uments and tablets. Altogether it is a delightful 
church to wander in. 

Entering Westminster Abbey by the North Tran- 
sept you would feel at once, even if you knew noth- 
ing of its story, that you are in the Valhalla of 
England. The Monument of the elder William Pitt 
arrests your gaze at the very doors, and you find 
yourself surrounded by statues and monuments of 
the Duke of Newcastle, George Canning, Beacons- 
field, Palmerston, Castlereagh, Gladstone, and many 
statesmen less known to us than these. And un- 
less one's ambitions are moderate, bewilderment be- 
gins at this point. The half cannot be told — 
certainly not in one chapter of a book — nor can it 
be seen in a solitary visit. It is difficult to see every- 
thing by yourself and it is not easy to follow the 
rapid, stereotyped remarks of the black-gowned ver- 
gers. You are oppressed by a feeling that their 
time is money, and even in the chapels they are far 
too brief and pressing. The best plan in my experi- 
ence is to purchase the " Pall Mall Gazette " six- 
penny " Guide " a day or two before and to become 
familiar with its contents. After that the Abbey 
will seem a little less chaotic. The great names of 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

England and the world look down upon you from 
every foot of space, or up from the pavement. 

In the West aisle of this north transept you come 
upon Warren Hastings, Richard Cobden, Sir Henry 
Maine, Lord Halifax. And strolling down the aisle 
of the nave on the same side of the church you find 
William Wilberforce, the foe of slavery, the tomb 
and the monument of Sir Isaac Newton, the grave 
of Lord Kelvin and the great black slabs in the pave- 
ment over the remains of the astronomer Herschel 
and of Charles Darwin. " O Rare Ben Jonson " 
lies, or rather stands (for he was buried standing) 
in about the middle of the North Aisle, and beyond 
him are Hunter, Lyell, the geologist, Charles James 
Fox, Viscount Howe, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Hol- 
land, Zachary Macaulay, father of the historian, 
and William Pitt, who was not only a chip of the old 
block, but the old block itself. 

Crossing to the opposite side, which is the old 
baptistry, you find a miniature Poets' Corner with 
windows to Cowper and Herbert, with monuments to 
Charles Kingsley, to Dr. Thomas Arnold and his 
son Matthew, to Keble and to Wordsworth. The 
long line of the South Aisle contains many names to 
enumerate which would make a catalogue. I shall 
only mention those of Congreve, the dramatist, Ma- 
jor Andre, John Wesley, Godfrey Kneller and Sir 
Cloudesley Shovel. Of course many of these, as 

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WHITEHALL AND WESTMINSTER 

Wordsworth and Wesley, are buried elsewhere. In 
the middle of the nave are the tombs of David Liv- 
ingstone, Archbishop Trench, Robert Stephenson, 
the engineer. Sir James Outram, the soldier, Lord 
Lawrence and many others. 

This brings one to the South Transept and to 
what is to many of us the most interesting spot in 
the Abbey — the Poet's Comer. The worst of 
tombs and graves is, that in describing them you can- 
not help falling into the tone of the cicerone, with 
the stereotyped phrases. But in the Poet's Comer 
all order is suspended, and the only way you could 
enumerate the names is to shoot them out of a can- 
non's mouth. The space is small and the huddle of 
tombs and memorials is great, which gives an air of 
bewildering confusion. If it is indeed a poet's cor- 
ner, you wonder what John, Duke of Argyll and 
Greenwich, is doing there with a huge and elaborate 
tomb by Roubiliac. But this is like any other so- 
ciety : you always find a few outsiders and cabotins. 
But the poets are there for all that (with certain 
notable lacunae) from Chaucer to Tennyson. 
Chaucer's remains had not far to travel, for he 
dwelt before his death in a cottage that stood where 
Henry VII's Chapel now stands. The busts of Dry- 
den and Longfellow greet you in the most luminous 
spot of the Comer, near the gates of the Ambulatory, 
and just beyond them is the sixteenth century tomb 

[139] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

of Chaucer with a fine window above it. The chron- 
ological order of a library or a picture-gallery is 
obviously out of the question here, so you must find 
those canonized in your heart among the many not 
so canonized, among the many you possibly never 
heard of. In a row of slabs in front of Chaucer's 
tomb you find the graves of Cowley, Browning, Ten- 
nyson and Denham. You would perhaps prefer, 
say, Keats and Shelley or Keats and Chatterton to 
occupy the places of Cowley and Denham, but so it 
is. Spencer, " prince of poets," is also buried near 
Chaucer, and it was Spencer's tomb that fixed the 
name of this spot as the Poet's Corner. You go on 
discovering the graves of Dickens, Sheridan, Garrick, 
Macaulay, of Handel, the musician, whose wonderful 
march from " Saul " we heard so beautifully played 
on the Abbey organ only the other day at the White- 
law Reid memorial service. You find memorials to 
Johnson, Goldsmith, Irving, Southey, Bums, Thack- 
eray, Coleridge, and the somewhat crouching and 
contracted figure of Shakespeare, erected in 1740. 
Shf^espeare seems unfortunate in his monuments. 
The one at Southwark is not much better. But, as 
Milton said : 

What needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones 

The labour of an age in pil^d stones? 

And Shakespeare rests at Stratford (" Cursed be 
he that moves my bones! "), ]Milton, as we have seen, 
at St. Giles, Thackeray in Kensal Green, and Gold- 

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WHITEHALL AND WESTMINSTER 

smith in the Temple. The labor of an age in piled 
stones was unnecessary to them. 

Concerning the chapels of the Abbey and their 
tombs books have been and might still be written. 
Yet here I can say but little concerning them. You 
cannot wander among them alone. You must, ex- 
cept on Mondays and Tuesdays, pay sixpence ad- 
mission, and whether you pay or not, a guide ac- 
companies and lectures to you. There is nothing 
wrong with that, if onl}'^ he gave you more time to 
examine the tombs. But for the most part it is a 
swift journey, like that of an express train. Three 
of the finest old tombs in the Abbcj' are outside the 
chain of chapels. I mean those of Aveline of Lan- 
caster, of her husband Edmund Crouchback, founder 
of the house of Lancaster, and of Aymer do Valence, 
Earl of Pembroke, once the owner of the Temple, 
after the Templars were expelled from it. These 
tombs were all erected in the fourteenth century, in 
the finest Gothic style we know anything about. The 
portrait of Richard II, a much restored and much 
tampered-with picture, but nevertheless the oldest 
contemporary portrait of an English sovereign in 
existence, is also in the Sanctuary. Close by the 
gate of the South Ambulatory is the tomb of King 
Sebert, who died about 616, which the guide is in 
too much of a hurry to show you. And then, it 
should be said, there is some doubt of the authenticity 
of this tomb. But so many thoroughly authcnti- 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

cated kings and queens lie in the chapels which follow, 
that a Saxon king more or less matters little. 

Think how many Royal bones 
Sleep within these heaps of stones, 

sang Francis Beaumont, in his day, contemplating 
the Abbey. And if I were the King, bent on perpet- 
uating my line, I should close the Abbey chapels. 
StiU, perhaps it is as well to show them, in order to 
prove over and over that royal bones have no ad- 
vantage whatsoever over others. 

With the very first chapel shown begins that series 
of names famous in British history that makes this 
portion of the Abbey so impressive. Here in St. 
Edmund's lie the Earl of Shrewsbury, Edward Tal- 
bot, and his Countess; William de Valence, Earl of 
Pembroke, father of Aymer; the little brother and 
sister of the Black Prince with tiny figures of them 
in alabaster placed there in 1340, at a cost of 20 
shillings, and strangely enough, Bulwer Lytton, the 
voluminous author of ** The Lady of Lyons '* and 
so many other books and plays. Under what is con- 
sidered the finest brass in the Abbey lies Eleanor de 
Bohun, Duchess of Gloucester, whose husband was 
murdered at the order of Richard II in 1397. The 
brass does not look as though it had been there over 
five hundred years, and yet it has. 

The oldest tomb in the next chapel, of St. Nicho- 
las, is that of Philippa, Duchess of York, whose hus- 

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WHITEHALL AND WESTMINSTER 

band died on the field at Agincourt. Other remark- 
able tombs there are; those of Lady Burleigh (died 
1589) wife of the great Burleigh (he himself is 
buried at Stamford); of Sir George and Lady Vil- 
liers, a veritable altar erected by their son, the famous 
and infamous Buckingham of James I and Charles I ; 
and the vault of the Percy family, of the blood of 
Hotspur, which still has the right to be buried in 
the Abbey, irrespective of the Dean's or the public's 
wishes. 

These chapels, however, seem but as accessories 
to the great chapel of Henry VII, " the wonder of the 
world," as it has been called, which occupies more 
space than all the rest put together. I, for my part, 
believe that Rome and Florence have finer old mon- 
uments to show, but I cannot thrill at the names of 
Popes or Medici as at these ancient British names. 
Besides, I doubt if all Europe can show such a ceiling 
as this in Henry VII's chapel, Washington Irving 
speaks of " the fretted roof achieved with the wonder- 
ful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb," and a 
later writer compares it to lace. Torrigiano, a fel- 
low pupil of Michael Angelo, is responsible for some 
of the sculpture here, but I know not who made the 
ceiling, except that it must have been of Italian work- 
manship, though an English mason, Robert Vertue, 
is said to be the designer of the chapel. Lace, cob- 
web — the comparisons are equally apt and equally 
vague. One must see it to learn what can be, what 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

once could be, wrought in stone. It was a belief of 
Henry VII that if he built a splendid place of sepul- 
ture for himself and his family, the new Tudor line 
which he was establishing on the throne would be 
more solidly fixed in England. His own tomb was 
carved by the imported Torrigiano, and everything 
from the bronze gates to the ceiling was made studi- 
ously beautiful. 

In many respects the most popularly interesting 
tomb in the south aisle of the chapel, is that of Mary, 
Queen of Scots, who was buried after her execution 
at Peterborough Cathedral. But when her son, 
James I, came to the throne of England, he had the 
remains brought to Westminster and built a tomb 
for her as elaborate as that which holds Queen Eliz- 
abeth in the north aisle opposite, also erected by him. 
In each case a marble effigy lies under a canopy upon 
a heavy sarcophagus. Many princes and princesses 
lie in Queen Mary's vault, including the Prince Ru- 
pert, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, daughter of 
James I, and eighteen children of Queen Anne, only 
one of whom survived infancy, and he died at eleven 
years of age. To me the most notable tomb in the 
south aisle is that of Margaret Beaufort, Countess of 
Richmond and Derby, the mother of Henry VII. 
The eflfigy shows the excellent character of the 
woman ; she founded two colleges, Christ's and St. 
John's at Cambridge, endowed the Chairs in Divinity 
in both Universities, and to this day forty poor 

[144] 



WHITEHALL AND WESTMINSTER 

widows every week receive two loaves of bread and 
two pence at the Abbey through this Countess's 
charity. In the Chapter House I saw her house- 
hold account-book, and I am not surprised to learn 
that to her " the King, her son, owed everything." 
Richly does she deserve the Torrigiano tomb in 
which she has slept some four hundred years and 
odd. Other royal remains, in the mortuary phrase, 
awaiting the resurrection here, are those of Charles 
II, William and Mary, Queen Anne and General 
Monk. 

Dean Stanley, that indefatigable student of the 
Abbey, has a chapel almost to himself, and the Crom- 
well vault beyond, you are told, is empty since the 
bones of the Protector were violently desecrated 
upon the Restoration. But the descendants of 
Charles II cluster thickly in the self-same Chapel, 
and as for the (favorite) Duke of Buckingham, he 
has an entire chapel to himself with an elaborate 
monument abounding in sculptured women weeping 
and children praying in what would now be called a 
very rococo style. 

The tomb of Henry VII himself (and of his Queen 
Elizabeth of York) in this upper part of the chapel, 
was well worth all the effort and money that Henry 
expended upon it. The bronze effigies, the black 
marble, the frieze and the figures are of admirable 
workmanship. James I liked it so much that he had 
himself buried in the vault beneath. The altar is in 

[145] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

front of the tomb and before the altar lies Edward 
VI. George II and Queen Caroline are buried fur- 
ther down the nave with no more memorials than 
their names upon the paving stones, and many of 
the progeny of the House of Hanover fill the rest of 
the nave. The tomb of the little princes murdered 
in the Tower adjoins Buckingham's grandiose chapel 
and Queen Elizabeth's resting-place, further down 
the north Ambulatory, has already been mentioned. 
Addison, under a gray slab with bronze lettering, 
sleeps at the very threshold of this north aisle, so 
that you cannot, help walking over his grave every 
time you leave this chapel. 

Edward the Confessor's Chapel, shown after Henry 
VII's, is the shrine of the Abbey, and more than two 
centuries older than the other. Plantagenet Kings 
lie grouped about the Confessor's tomb, and the 
Plantagenet Henry III himself, and his two sons, 
bore the saint's coffin on their shoulders, October 13, 
1269, to this new resting-place, where it has since re- 
mained. And Henry III lies opposite St. Edward 
with the Confessor's Queen, Editha, between them. 
Edward I, the Hammer of the Scots, who brouglit 
the " stone of destiny " to England and his Queen 
Eleanor, for whom Charing Cross, and the other 
crosses were built, sleeps on the same side. Opposite 
are Edward III, his Queen Phillppa, who saved the 
burgesses of Calais, and Richard II, last of the Plan- 
tagenet line. Henry V under a headless wooden ef- 

[146] 



WHITEHALL AND WESTMINSTER 

figy, sleeps in the Chantry Chapel near by, with the 
sword, shield and saddle he used at Agincourt raised 
on a beam above him. Katherine de Valois, his 
Queen, who spoke such pretty French in Shakes- 
peare's play, is not far away. The coronation chair, 
with the Stone of Scone, or of Destiny, inside it, 
is also kept in the same chapel. Every king since 
Edward Longshanks has sat in it, yet it looks like a 
durable piece of furniture despite the thousand in- 
itials carved upon it and the general wear and tear. 

Other chapels contain other tombs, but if one is 
not very careful one may grow as morbidly avaricious 
of tombs as of jewels or postage stamps. I shall 
enumerate no more here, despite the fact that many 
remain, even in the cloisters. And the cloisters lead 
one to the Chapter House (once the only house of 
Parliament England possessed) which is simply a 
treasure house of ancient documents, royal seals and 
what not. That is one thing which makes England 
so romantic to those of English speech. The very 
growth of the speech itself may almost be traced in 
the Chapter House. You may see there a document 
of the Mercian King Off a (dated 785) ; a letter of 
John O' Gaunt ; documents of Caxton, Wynken de 
Worde; of John Milton, father of the poet; and of 
John Dryden, the poet. And strangely enough a 
tablet to James Russell Lowell is dimly visible in the 
dark doorway. 

The Jerusalem Chamber, whither Henry IV was 
[147] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

carried after his seizure while praying in a niche of 
the Confessor's shrine, is not shown because, as the 
porter's daughter put it, the Dean has it for his 
own private use. The Dean also has an outlook 
upon that haunt of peace, Dean's Yard, out of which 
an old Gothic arch leads to the famous Westminster 
School, that has educated so many notable English- 
men, including Ben Jonson, Fletcher, Hakluyt, Dry- 
den, Locke, Sir Christopher Wren, Cowper, Gibbon, 
Warren Hastings, Bentham and Southey. The red 
granite column just west of the Abbey is said to 
stand upon the site of Caxton's house, but Sir Walter 
Besant fixes the spot within the limits of the present 
Westminster Palace Hotel. Outside Dean's Yard 
begins Victoria Street, a broad and busy thorough- 
fare full of shops, flats and office buildings. It is 
worth following at least as far as Ashley Place, in 
order to get a sight of the new Catholic Cathedral 
(190S) with its speckled appearance of red brick 
and gray stone. A new cathedral, however, is like 
a new violin or new wine. 

The Houses of Parliament I have kept until the 
last because they loom so large that I expected them 
to close this chapter like a national anthem. And 
now that I have reached them, I am suddenly dumb. 
Stand upon Westminster Bridge at midnight, — or 
at any other time — and look upon the broadside of 
towers, stone and spires, and you are ovei-whelmed by 
the massiveness and seeming dignity of the ensemble. 

[148] 



WHITEHALL AND WESTMINSTER 

But somehow upon nearer examination you find noth- 
ing to thrill you. The whole vast fabric has been 
built since 1840, and at times it gives you the ef- 
fect of being sadly out of drawing. It seems as 
though the arcliitect forgot his scale and began 
afresh from time to time on a new scale. Yet it is 
very impressive at a distance, and Westminster Hall 
cannot lose its historical associations. Here stood 
Charles I receiving his death sentence, here were 
condemned More and Essex and Strafford. Any- 
one may visit the Houses of Parliament on Satur- 
days ; that is to say, by the time this book appears, 
I hope anyone will be again able to vist them on 
Saturdays. At the moment a fear of the militant 
suffragettes has caused the visits to be forbidden. 
The rooms, lobbies, and halls of the Lords and the 
Commons are normally shown. But the most inter- 
esting features to the stranger are, of course, the 
sessions of the Peers and the Commons and their 
debates. Shortly before writing this I went to hear 
Mr. Arthur Balfour speak upon the Home Rule Bill. 
No one who has not heard him can imagine the seem- 
ing artlessness of his oratory. Very suave and 
polished and kindly it seems, full of genuine polite- 
ness to his opponents, much as a man might converse 
at a dinner table. The benches are ranged length- 
wise on either side of the House, with the Speaker's 
desk in the middle, which helps to give an effect of 
privacy, almost of intimacy. Had it not been for a 

[149] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

little retort by Mr. Ramsey MacDonald, the Socialist 
Labor leader, to a certain " noble Lord," recalling 
to mind the speeches of Burke, I might have thought 
I had stumbled into a private debating club. Mr. 
Balfour, however, is one of the few who can give 
these causeries any charm. For the most part the 
tameness is unrelieved. England, with all her glori- 
ous past, seems on every hand to be crying out for 
a glorious present and a glorious future. In every 
street there is poverty and misery stabbing at your 
heart. Emigration to Canada, Australia and the 
other colonies continues apace. But the House of 
Commons is mildly debating upon Welsh Disestab- 
lishment ! Surely the awakening cannot be far off. 



[150] 



X 

GALLERIES AND PICTURES 



GREAT quarto and other volumes have been 
written upon the National Gallery of Lon- 
don. To put it, therefore, within the confines 
of a chapter seems quite sacrilegious. But even 
that sacrilege is difficult of commission, because the 
National Gallery, so long as I have known it, is al- 
ways being re-hung. At this instant five rooms are 
being refitted and the pictures are huddled in the 
basement. The rest of the gallery has been re- 
arranged so recently that the last current edition 
of Baedeker and other guide-books and catalogues 
are superseded. That is, of course, an excellent 
sign, for it indicates a vigorous development ; but 
for the visitor who aims to examine the entire Gal- 
lery, and not merely to gaze at a few old friends, the 
path is beset with difficulties. He finds all guides 
incorrect and full of seeming lacunae, though, on the 
other hand, he stumbles upon new treasures as I did 
the other day upon a new Raphael (2919), a Pro- 
cession to Calvary, acquired in the spring of 1913 

[151] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

— a small, but beautiful picture, full of the touches 
that make the master dear to us. 

I wonder what London would do without the Na- 
tional Gallery ! Sometimes, on gloomy, wretched, 
foggy days, it seems almost as though the brilliant 
life and vivid colors of the Raphaels, the Correg- 
gios, the Venetians, must pierce the gloom like fires 
and assure Englishmen that there is sunlight still 
somewhere upon earth ! The success of Browning's 
poetry in England must be largely due to the same 
craving for color and life that the National Gallery 
to some extent satisfies. What with trysting lovers 
and American sightseers, the Gallery is as much 
frequented as any in Europe. It contains (if you 
count the Pope Julius II, a copy of the one in Flor- 
ence) no less than seven Raphaels, whereas even the 
Pitti Palace, with its famous Raphael room, has 
only eight. 

Fain would I set down one by one the pictures 
in each room, but the most that I can do here is to 
indicate a few of them in a cursory glance. (And I 
trust no one will mistake my elementary comments 
for " criticism," since I am neither Mr. Berenson 
nor mad.) Room I, as you enter it, startles 
you with a flood of color and splendid work, and 
at once transports you to Italy. Florence and 
the Vatican alone can match this collection of mas- 
terpieces in one comparatively small chamber. 
Paolo Uccello, he who loved perspective so much 

[152] 



GALLERIES AND PICTURES 



that he would not go to bed for absorption 
in it, has a battle-scene here (1416) with perspec- 
tive to his heart's content. But the most inter- 
esting paintings are doubtless those by the two 
Lippi, Lippo and Filippino, father and son. Lippo 
has a splendid Annunciation (589) to say nothing 
of two other religious canvases (these pictures are 
nearly all religious), and Filippino's Adoration of 
the Magi (1033) has been long attributed to Bot- 
ticelli, and is so still upon the label. The Madonna 
and Child with two Saints (29'3) is perhaps the best 
of Filippino's work in this Gallery, and No. 667, 
John the Baptist and six other Saints, is possibly the 
most perfect of his father's work here. Piero di 
Cosimo's Death of Procris (698) and Botticelli's 
Portrait of a Young Man (626) are each in their 
way unforgettable. Equally so is his Virgin and 
Child (275), one of the tenderest of all the Madon- 
nas, though not starred by Baedeker. The two fol- 
lowing it. Mars and Venus (915) and the Nativity 
(1034), both starred, are great pictures also, but 
they interest you less. The truth is, in a great 
gallery like the National, even the masterpieces are 
engaged in a sort of struggle for existence — for 
your attention. And it is odd what things survive. 
The smallest among the Raphaels in Room VI, the 
Vision of a Knight (213), — showing him in a dream 
that he must choose in this world, and choose early, 
between pleasure and glory, — remains unfading in 

[153] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

your memory. No doubt the Child of Urbino, as 
the painter has been sentimentally called, must have 
made the choice long before he came to Rome where 
his own glory came to him so brimmingly. 

Room II is almost wholly given over to triptychs 
and altar-pieces by Orcagna and Benozzo Gozzoli. 
One Fra Angelico (1406), an Annunciation, is hung 
too high, and Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi 
(592), though not a large picture, contains a whole 
world of life and color. Room III contains some 
beautiful Ghirlandajos and Andrea del Sartos and 
Room IV, though closed for re-hanging as I write, 
did and probably will again contain Leonardo da 
Vinci's Madonna, a copy of " La Vierge aux 
Rochers " of the Louvre. I need hardly say it con- 
tains much else besides. 

Baedeker, I see, recommends a visit to Room XXV 
(now XXIX), to the Guido Reni * and Correggio 
pictures before proceeding to the Raphaels. In 
that I am bound to say I disagree. One cannot as- 
sume unlimited time on the part of the reader, and 
where time is limited the Raphaels in Room VI 
should certainly be seen first, even if the rest must 
be slurred. It would doubtless be an error to 
omit Correggio's Mercury Instructing Cupid in the 
Presence of Venus (10), or his Ecce Homo (15), 
and most of us would willingly give Raphael's Pope 
Julius II for either of them. But all the same 
* The Guido Reni pictures are now in Room XXVII. 
[154] 



GALLERIES AND PICTURES 

Room VI is of the first importance. The Vision of a 
Knight (213) already mentioned, and the Cartoon 
for it, hanging just below, together form a whole 
curriculum in the art of great painting. The Ma- 
donna degli Ansidei (1171), accounted the greatest 
Raphael in this gallery, is a masterpiece of drawing 
and color, as perfect as any of this master's — here 
or in Italy. It cost the Gallery, we are told in the 
guide-books, £70,000. To me, however, it does not 
compare in appeal with the Dresden Madonna ; but 
I am afraid that Dresden Madonna is my King 
Charles's head. But even here there are things upon 
which one may linger. There is that Vision of a 
Knight ; there is the St. Catherine of Alexandria 
(168), truly magical painting, and even the so- 
called Garvagh Madonna (744), which seems so much 
more a shrine and altar to maternity than the larger 
picture. Of the Procession to Calvary (2919) I 
have already spoken, and the Madonna of the Tower 
cannot be passed over. The Circumcision, by Luca 
Signorelli (1128), an exquisite group picture, is well 
worthy of this room. 

The long hall known as Room VII is filled with 
Venetians, from rare Giorgiones to broad canvases 
of Veronese, that remind you of the walls and ceil- 
ings of the Doge's Palace, where that prolific artist 
printed as lavishly. Titian, Tintoretto and Sebas- 
tiano del Piombo shine forth from the sides of this 
room as do the Raphaels from the one adjoining. 

[155] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

One of the most beautiful Holy Families in the gal- 
lery (and there are many here) is that of Titian 
(No. 4), and his Ariosto is both a poet and a little 
mad. The glowing vitality of his Bacchus and 
Ariadne (35) floods that side of the room with 
movement and color. All nature seems to partici- 
pate. But Sebastiano del Piombo's Raising of Laz- 
arus (No. 1), as far as the Antipodes in theme from 
the Bacchus, in a manner vies with that picture. 
This, too, is full of life, of wild mortal wonder and 
admiration of the miracle. Titian's Venus and 
Adonis (37) will be remembered for the same reason 
that Shakespeare's poem on the subject remains in 
the memory, and Tintoretto's Origin of the Milky 
Way (1313) is equally unforgettable. The oppo- 
site waU holds some Moroni portraits, including the 
famous Moroni Tailor (697), that all the world 
has delighted in for centuries. Among the works 
of Giovanni and Gentile Bellini on this wall is the 
"masterly portrait" (189) as Ruskin called it, by 
Giovanni, of the Doge Leonardo Loredano, almost as 
famous as the Tailor. Both Doge and Tailor were 
wise in their choice of painters — if the tailor had a 
choice. And no one should pass over Giovanni Bel- 
lini's Madonna of the Pomegranate (280). Room 
VIII has some Mantegnas, but the place to sec ]Man- 
tegna is at Hampton Court. This room is dedicated 
to Crevelli, and Crevelli's Madonnas are worth see- 
ing, though I cannot pretend to have spent much 

[156] 



GALLERIES AND PICTURES 

time over them. Room IX is filled particularly 
with the art of Veronese and of that lover of the 
open, Canaletto. No one has so faithfully painted 
the Grand and other canals of Venice as Canaletto, 
and a visit to these pictures, could it be combined 
with sunshine, would prove almost equivalent to 
drifting in a gondola in that glorious city. The 
foremost picture of Veronese here is (294) the 
Family of Darius at the Feet of Alexander. Ruskin 
called it the most precious Paul Veronese in the 
world, and even the Venetian clothes of Darius and 
his family fail to impair the beauty of the picture. 
The young Alexander looks remarkably like a young 
patrician Englishman of the time when young pa- 
trician Englishmen pursued glory rather than pleas- 
ure. 

The Dutch and Flemish pictures in the National 
Gallery form a magnificent collection as rich and 
varied as the French and German is small and in- 
significant. Rembrandt is splendidly represented 
with no less than seventeen works, and Van Dyck, 
Rubens, Hals and De Hooch, not to mention Cuyp, 
Hobbema and Ruysdael, quite hold their own. 
These, like the Italians, have been repeatedly re- 
hung, and the Rembrandts, long in Room X, are now 
in Room XIV. Van Dyck and Rubens now dominate 
Room X. The Equestrian portrait of Charles I ar- 
rests your gaze immediately as you enter, and so 
completely altered is the scene and atmosphere after 

[157] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 



the Tuscans, Umbrians and Venetians, that it is best 
not to look upon the Dutch on the same day. Even 
the horse that Charles bestrides is so aristocratic 
in appearance that one can readily understand 
Oliver Cromwell's distaste for the entire picture. 
He sold it from Somerset House, where it originally 
hung, for £150, but the Duke of Marlborough found 
it in Munich a couple of generations later and 
brought it back to England. As to the portrait of 
Cornelius Van der Geest (5S) it is surpassed by 
perhaps no other in the gallery. Here also are a 
number of Van Dycks from the collection of Lord 
Wharton as well as a series of paintings by Rubens, 
who seems to have filled nearly every gallery in 
Europe and America with his work. The Chapeau 
de Poile (852), a wonderful rendering of a lady 
with a hat, always on students' days has many easels 
before it. Others here that appeal to the imagina- 
tion are the Rape of the Sabines (38), The Triumph 
of Silenus (853), The Judgment of Paris (194), 
and the Triumph of Julius Caesar (278) after Man- 
tegna's Cartoons. One cannot imagine living with 
Rubens canvases anywhere but in a palace. The 
genre-pictures of David Teniers, his pupil, however, 
are lovely harmonies, like the Old Woman peeling a 
Pear (805), or the Musical Party (154) which to 
see is to covet for our own particular dwelling-place. 
But my own covetings in pictures are perhaps ab- 
surdly humble. It is not Raphael's Madonna degli 

[158] 



GALLERIES AND PICTURES 

Ansidei that I would carry away with me ; that I am 
content to leave in the gallery. But Peter de 
Hooch's Interior of a Dutch House (834) I would 
hang where my daily life flows on, as a symbol of, 
and an inspiration to, peace and tranquillity. 

The Rembrandts are, as has been said, in Room 
XIV, and the last time I was there you could not see 
the pictures for the easels and the students that 
swarmed about them. These students are of all 
ages from seventeen to seventy, and it explains why 
so many color and brush dealers flourish in great 
cities. The fecundity of genius has always been a 
source of wonder. Granted a man is capable of 
perfection — once, sometimes. But how can one 
man be capable of so much perfection.? Hazlitt in 
his eloquent essay on " Genius " endeavors to ex- 
plain it. " So much," he says, " do Rembrandt's 
pictures savor of the soul and body of reality, that 
the thoughts seem identical with the objects — if 
there had been the least question what he should have 
done, or how he should do it, or how far he had suc- 
ceeded, it would have spoiled everything." Reality 
is the key — it is, so to speak, enshrined in the Dutch 
pictures, but particularly in Rembrandt. I need 
not number them, for they are unmistakable. The 
brilliant sketch of a Woman Bathing faces you and 
glows from the wall — when there are not three 
easels in front of it. And those portraits, so simple- 
seeming, the despair of copyists, that hold you spell- 

[159] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

bound like a drama or fine romance! But it is real- 
ity, the greatest of all romances. " The Old Lady," 
"The Jew Merchant," "The Old Man," "The 
Rabbi," "The Burgomaster," "The Portrait of a 
Woman," " Tobias and the Angel " — I need not 
enumerate them. I always look at the Cimabue Ma- 
donna in the vestibule outside, but the Rembrandt 
Room is where I spend what time I have for pictures, 
for this is reality, life. And many another picture 
by the masters that fill these Dutch and Flemish 
rooms comes very near to Rembrandt in finish, insight 
and power. It is only for reasons of space that no 
more of them are mentioned, and, after all, the best 
enumerator is the official catalogue. For given a 
certain experience, who can tell us what we ought 
to like? Upon some masterpieces, however, all the 
world is agreed. That is what constitutes the clas- 
sics in every art — the universal agreement upon 
their worth. 

Velasquez is another of those objects of universal 
agreement. There is not much of his work outside 
of Spain, yet Stafford House, Grosvenor House, 
Dorchester House and Apsley House have some of 
it, the Wallace Collection has more, and the National 
Gallery owns at least nine of his pictures. The Ad- 
miral Pulido-Pareja (1315) is undoubtedly the 
greatest Velasquez in the National Gallery, and the 
Philip IV (1129), the " Rokeby " Venus (2057) and 
the Boar Hunt (197) are scarcely inferior. The 

[i6o] 



GALLERIES AND PICTURES 

Boar Hunt is really a picture of all Spain in 
the painter's time. The Betrothal (1434), and the 
Sketch of a Duel in the Prado (1376) as well as the 
two religious pictures, Christ at the Column (1148) 
and Christ in the House of Martha (1375) are other 
notable examples in the list of Velasquez. Murillo's 
Holy Family, A Boy Drinking, and three other fine 
paintings, as well as some by Zurbaran, Lo Spag- 
noletto and one or two others, complete this marvel- 
ous Spanish room. 

Across the vestibule, in the left wing, is that 
great assemblage of English names that are perhaps 
more intimately familiar to us than those we have 
left behind: Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth, 
Crome, Constable, Lawrence, Turner — almost all 
that makes up tke history of British art. Turner, 
to be sure, is best seen at the Tate Gallery, almost 
half of which is devoted to his titanic output. But 
in the works of the others the National Gallery is 
rich almost beyond the dream of avarice. Often I 
have wandered about among the Italians, and even 
among the Dutch painters, feeling that after all I 
was an alien to them. But among the English 
masters you feel yourself at home. The painters 
and their subjects are all part and parcel of Eng- 
lish history, — of the Anglo-Saxon background. I 
do not know exactly how to class Holbein's Ambassa- 
dors and Christina of Denmark. From their posi- 
tion in the gallery (Room XX) they are regarded 

[i6i] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

as English pictures, but actually, I suppose, Hol- 
bein is one of the few Germans which the gallery 
possesses. But his neighbors here are Lely, Ramsay, 
and Hogarth with a series of pictures so human that 
even inferior painting can be forgiven him. The 
captivating Shrimp Girl (1162), the portraits of 
"Polly Peacham " (1161), his sister, his servants 
and himself, including the realistic novel that is em- 
bodied in the six pictures entitled Marriage a la 
Mode, are all of the essence of England. Crome's 
Mousehold Heath (689) in Room XXI is ranked by 
some as the finest of English pictures. I am not 
learned enough in these matters to add my opinion, 
but to me the English country-side in all its gener- 
ous verdure and in all its tenderness, unlike any 
other in the world, is magically depicted by men 
like Crome, Gainsborough, Constable, Wilson, all of 
whom may be studied in this and the following rooms. 
Room XXII contains some famous Turners, but, as 
I have said, the Tate Gallery, is his proper home. 
As for Room XXV, it is filled with the portraits of 
Reynolds ; the Dr. Johnson that we know so well 
from numerous photogravures, the Admiral Keppel, 
the celebrated Mrs. Siddons, and how many more be- 
sides ! All are of interest, even to the least of them ! 
Of the French collection in Rooms XXVI and 
XXVIII I shall not speak at length, for it is com- 
paratively unimportant. You sec a Corot or two, 
a Claude, a Nicolas Poussin and Rosa Bonheur's 

[162] 



GALLERIES AND PICTURES 

spirited Horse Fair, which quite overshadows some 
of its neighbors. 

n. 

Of the National Portrait Gallery I hardly dare to 
say anything in the midst of a chapter. It is one 
of the finest things that London has to offer and, to 
my thinking, one of the most interesting galleries 
in the world. It assembles under one roof the sort 
of collection that in other countries is diffused 
throughout the land. It is as characteristic, as 
unique in its way, as Westminster Abbey. Every 
one of the sixteen hundred or so of portraits here 
is of interest, though of course comparatively few 
are masterpieces of portraiture. But one scarcely 
asks for that. What, for instance, does it matter 
whether or not Hazlitt's portrait of his friend 
Charles Lamb, that dark, boyish, whimsical face, is 
or is not equal to, say, Van Dyck's Queen Henrietta 
as a work of art? A graceful and a bewitching por- 
trait is that of Charles First's Queen, but I would 
rather gaze on the face of Lamb. The bust of 
Thackeray as a schoolboy rejoices you more than 
Kneller's Sarah Jennings, and I would rather see 
Phillips's Blake or Severn's Keats than early Han- 
overian Kings by abler hands. And to look upon 
the " Chandos " Shakespeare is suddenly to rise in 
stature and self-esteem. This portrait, so convinc- 
ingly insignificant, will make any one of us believe 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

that he could have written Shakespeare's plays if 
only he had the mind ! Here, too, you may discover 
why Ben Jonson bore so great a reputation as a wit 
(his mocking mouth tells the tale), and why so fine 
a brain as Bacon's stooped to meanness: to descend 
from a sire like Sir Nicholas Bacon (judging from 
his porcine features in the portrait) was a heavy 
handicap even for Verulam. How amazed you are 
to find that Bunyan looks so precisely like your 
butcher, and how uncanny is the resemblance of 
Henry VIII to those sleek, mud-loving fishes seldom 
seen alive anywhere except in the Naples Aquarium ! 
All these and hundreds more reveal their lives to you 
in the Portrait Gallery. I should regard it as a 
privation not to know the National Gallery, but not 
to have seen the National Portrait Gallery in Lon- 
don would be no less than a calamity. 

in. 

The Tate Gallery would have satisfied the aspira- 
tions of a Cecil Rhodes. English, all English, that 
was his dream, and that is the Tate Gallery. 
Largely, it is, so Mr. E. V. Lucas says, as though 
a procession of old Academies had filed through, and 
some of these old Academies, I may add, resemble 
the new Academies. But Mr. Lucas wrote before 
the Turner wing was added, which makes a deal of 
difference. To-day to know Turner, perhaps the 
greatest impressionist the world has produced, you 

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GALLERIES AND PICTURES 

must go to the Tate. Nine rooms, no less, are 
given over to this vast collection of one man's work ; 
the very bulk of it is over-powering. But it has a 
profounder interest, indeed, a too profound inter- 
est. It tends to dwarf the rest of the gallery, and 
even Watts, with an entire room to himself, seems 
puny by comparison. Perhaps, however, that is only 
just. 

Sir Henry Tate, who presented the building to the 
nation as the inscription on his bust reads, in thanks- 
giving for a prosperous business career of sixty 
years, chose one of the dreariest spots in London 
for his gift. The drab waterfront of Pimlico, in 
the region of Vauxhall Bridge, extends on either 
side, and the fine Corinthian columns face no more 
aesthetically minded folk than the decayed watermen 
of the crawling river-barges, and the occasional 
stevedore of the region. Yet some of the most in- 
teresting pictures in England are housed in the 
Tate, and what with Whistler, Turner and Watts, 
some of the best. Leaving Turner aside for the 
moment, interest certainly predominates over merit. 
Twice, for instance, appears that excellent pair. My 
Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman, and once 
Yorick, buying gloves from the grisette in , Paris. 
Beatrix is knighting Henry Esmond, with the very 
look of the Trix we know, admire and dislike ; and 
the portrait of Mrs. William Morris by Rossetti 
shows us what an influence that lady's exquisite fea- 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

tures must have had on the entire pre-Raphaelite 
school. These are personalities rather than great 
art, but who has ever pretended that we of this 
age are not interested in personalities? Similarly, 
one would hardly class the three or four Blake pic- 
tures in Room I with the great Italians. But the 
allegorical picture of man's existence and the spirit- 
ual fonn of Pitt (1110) are highly interesting to 
the student of Blake, if not to the student of art. 
There are here canvases of Eastlake, Landseer, Mul- 
ready, Burne-Jones, already known to most of us 
from numerous reproductions. Baedeker, for in- 
stance, declines to star No. 1771 in Room III, King 
Cophetua and the Beggar Maid. But we star it 
for ourselves, none the less, for such beauty as it has 
touches us in deeper quarters than mere cold appre- 
ciation. We know the legend and perhaps Ten- 
nyson's poem from childhood, and that is a power- 
ful magnifying lens for merit. These rooms are 
filled Avith many pictures of like appeal. Rossetti's 
Ancilla Domini, his Mariana, who was none other 
than Mrs. William Morris (the actual portrait is 
also here), the Beata Beatrix (1279) who was really 
the painter's own wife, lost to him in 1862; Ford 
Madox Brown's Christ Washing St. Peter's Feet 
(1394), Millais' Boyhood of Sir Walter Raleigh 
(1691) and Fred Walker's Harbour of Refuge 
(1'391) or The Vagrants (1209) — these are some 
of the old friends we meet and greet in this gallery. 

[i66] 



GALLERIES AND PICTURES 

Fred Walker, in turn, reminds us of Little Billee, 
for do we not remember the two young geniuses play- 
ing at cup and ball as drawn by Du Maurier in 
" Trilby " ? There are no pictures labeled " William 
Bagot," but surely Little Billee's work is here. It 
must be here. And therein lies our interest in this 
gallery. Now and then, to be sure, you meet a 
masterpiece that is one of its own right, such as 
Whistler's Old Battersea Bridge (1959), a poem in 
colors, a nocturne, a fantasy, yet as real as the 
bridge itself. 

The vast array of the Turners requires a book to 
itself, and I shall not even pretend to enumerate 
them. I have said they are overwhelming, but that 
is a vague word. They have the peculiarity of ac- 
tually modifying your way of looking on life, on na- 
ture, on the past. Look upon the Dido and ^neas, 
and you will never more picture Dido's realm but 
in Turner's terms, nor will Hannibal cross the Alps 
but as Turner painted that dreadful epic, and the 
" Fighting Temeraire " or the Death of Nelson will 
cling to and modify your imagination. The Thames 
scenes, the sea pieces, the landscapes, all seem to be 
the work of a giant. 

G. F. Watts, with his more obvious and premedi- 
tated aim at greatness, has painted a series of large 
and interesting pictures, but they are far from affect- 
ing you like the Turners. He stopped at nothing in 
choosing his themes, and in the Watts Room (XVH) 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

you find largo canvases with such titles as The All- 
pervading, Chaos, Love and Life, Death Crowning 
Innocence, Love and Death, and so on. But for the 
most part they fail to arouse your enthusiasm. 
While such pictures as " For He Had Great Pos- 
sessions," or " She Shall Be Called Woman " seem 
like magazine illustrations. But for all that the 
Watts collection is of interest. 

I can say little here about such lesser though 
admirable collections as the one at the Dulwich pic- 
ture gallery, because Dulwich is five miles from Lon- 
don, and when it comes to traveling in search of 
pictures, the enthusiastic seeker will doubtless know 
more about them than I can tell him. I may note in 
passing, however, that the fifteen paintings by Cuyp 
in this little gallery are well worth the brief jour- 
ney — only twenty minutes from Victoria. There 
are many more of the best Dutch masters here, in- 
cluding two Rembrandts, to say nothing of a Ve- 
lasquez and some Murlllos. 

But the flower of the smaller galleries In or about 
London Is the Wallace Collection, In Manchester 
Square. 

This Is that " Gaunt House " that we know so 
intimately from " Vanity Fair," and if Thackeray 
painted the great Marquis of Steyne with a satyr- 
like leer, it is not for us to refute him, even though 
the bust of the Fourth Marquis of Hertford, on the 
stalrwa}^ shows a very trim head with a fashion- 



GALLERIES AND PICTURES 

able wisp of Van Djck beard. The opening of Hert- 
ford House as a public museum and gallery was 
a vindication of Major Pendennis. Tuft-hunter 
though the Major doubtless was, he can nevertheless 
be forgiven for seeking entrance as often as pos- 
sible to this treasure-house. It is the sort of private 
residence that in a Lytton or Disraeli novel would 
be deemed a florid exaggeration, yet any exaggera- 
tion would fall short of the truth. 

I shall not weary the reader with a catalogue, but 
some of the finest pictures in the world are here. 
Velasquez' Lady with a Fan (88), Van Dyck's Phil- 
ippe le Roy (94), Rembrandt's two portraits, Jan 
Pellicome and his wife (82 and 90), his Unmerciful 
Servant (86) and Frans Hals' Laughing Cavalier 
(84) would be enough to make the fortune of any 
gallery. There are some 750 pictures and nearly 
all of them are of importance, and each one appeals 
in a special way. Whoever collected them pleased 
his own eye first of all. These lovely Dutch pic- 
tures, little canvases many of them, smaller than any 
in the other galleries, pictures meant to be lived with, 
as the tiny masterpieces by Gabriel Metsu, would 
seem lost in a huge gallery. But there are larger, 
too, Cuyps and Hobbemas and portraits by Mierevelt 
that are marvels of craftsmanship. There are some 
beautiful Reynolds and Gainsborough portraits, 
notably those of Perdita Robinson, George IV's 
friend of the pretty, empty face, and there is here 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

a host of Venetian scenes bj Guardi and by Cana- 
letto. 

In the work of certain French masters this col- 
lection makes up the void felt at the National Gal- 
lery, and in some respects surpasses the Louvre. 
The frail Fragonards, the incredible little Watteaus, 
the long series of Boucher and the childishly sweet 
heads of Greuze, so remote from the Dutch masters 
that naturally harmonize with their English environ- 
ment, seem to carry the aroma of a brief, bygone 
theatrical era, given to sensualism and insincerity, 
that left no trace but these pictures. 

There are three separate catalogues sold of the 
Wallace Collection: a catalogue of pictures, of the 
Armoury, and of the objects of art. This shows 
the extent of the collection. You may think you have 
seen the last word in armor at the Tower. But 
the Wallace armor and weapons make the other seem 
like a crude rehearsal. The snuff-boxes, the minia- 
tures, the Sevres and majolica ware, the great as- 
semblage of rare seventeenth and eighteenth century 
French furniture, and I hardly know what, else be- 
sides, all tend to bear out Bliicher's famous and la- 
conic remark when first he set eyes on London, — 
" What a city to loot ! " 



[170] 



XI 

HEKE AND THERE 

OFTEN I am haunted by a dim woodcut in an 
ancient copy of " Robinson Crusoe " that heis 
doubtless long since fallen to dust. Robin- 
son in old age finds himself in dangerous circum- 
stances and resolves " to sell his life dearly." Grim 
and troubled were the imperfect features of that 
wooden Robinson ! And now as this book ap- 
proaches its end, and I survey London, I too am dis- 
mayed — by the appalling extent of what remains 
untouched. Grimly I, too, would sell my life dearly 
and write a score of chapters on as many places did 
the scope of the book permit it. But I cannot even 
begin to write of, say, the British Museum, for 
fear lest I should never be able to cease. 

Whosoever has not passed a few days in its Read- 
ing Room has missed one of the solid pleasures of 
life. The ecstasy of knowing that all you can pos- 
sibly want is there to be had ! Only those who habit- 
ually use libraries know what that means. The 
guide books say there are forty miles of shelves in 
the Museum. But that seems to me a less impres- 
sive fact than the 900 volumes of catalogue — where 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

every author, however humble, may find himself 
grouped with the immortals ! Nothing could be 
more flattering to vanity or consoling to neglect. A 
fine flame-like excitement seems to bum about the 
heads of the readers, sitting in roomy chairs at com- 
fortable desks, surrounded by priceless volumes, per- 
haps, that they have traversed half a world to con- 
sult. Though, of course there are a plenty in this 
circular paradisiacal room without that gem-like 
flame, the literary hacks of London, all the Grub 
Street of the day that George Gissing has depicted 
with so much unrejoicing realism. I make it a prac- 
tice when working in the Museum to take my tea in 
its refreshment room. The talk you overhear there 
ranges from Ceramics to Cyrenaics, from Nineveh to 
nonsense; and though the tea is not good, the faces 
are of absorbing interest. The tea-room lies off 
the Egyptian Galleries and outside the door are a 
few silent policemen and a hundred silent Pharaohs 
and their gods in granite and basalt, with calm 
sphinx-like features, gazing into eternity. From 
their vantage point of five thousand years they seem 
to say unemotionally, " Hurry through your heavy 
tea-cake if you will for another hour's reading; it 
is all one to the eternal silence of the universe." To 
write of the contents of the Museum would be to 
write a history of civilization, even of pre-historic 
civilization, and I think I shall not attempt that here. 

From the Elgin marbles to the least important auto- 

[172] 




pyrisht by Strrro-Trave! Co. 



The British Museum 



HERE AND THERE 



graph everything is of interest. All are on a level. 
Hampden, Pym and Cromwell's signatures repose in 
the same case with that of King Charles I. Richard- 
son and Fielding are neighbors to Dickens and 
Thackeray, and Luther, Calvin and Michael Angelo 
repose together with Goethe, Kant and Wagner. 
The manuscripts, the statuary, the archeological 
collections, the gems, the bronzes, the vases, the — 
but, as I have said, it is useless to begin. Sir John 
Cotton began the Museum by presenting his own 
collection to the nation exactly two hundred and 
thirteen years ago. Another couple of centuries 
and all Bloomsbury should be one vast stretch of 
British Museum. 

Already the population of Bloomsbury is largely 
composed of those that eddy round and round the 
Museum, the students from overseas, the Indian 
Babu, the continental scholar writing his magnum 
or other opus, and, generally, all who fill the boards 
ing houses of which Bloomsbury almost entirely con- 
sists. London University in Gower Street is not far 
away, and students of both Museum and University 
form a continuous population, a Latin Quarter 
about as different from the Parisian one as can well 
be imagined. Bloomsbury Square, Russell Square, 
Bedford Square, Wobum Square, Red Lion, Meck- 
lenburg, Brunswick Squares — the region abounds in 
them, as though to supply the air for the many in- 
habitants of each house. But these dwellings were 

[173] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

not always boarding houses. Literary and other 
associations cluster thickly about them. Mrs. Sid- 
dons, Lord Eldon, and Millais (at No. 87), once 
lived in Gower Street, and Wobum Square holds, in 
Christ Church, a memorial of Burne- Jones' design 
to Christina Rossetti, who however, lived in Torring- 
ton Square, No. 30. Red Lion Square is intimately 
connected with nineteenth-century art and litera- 
ture, for William Morris practiced his various crafts 
at No. 9, and at No. 17 once lived Burne-Jones and 
Rossetti. And in Theobald's Road near by, at No. 
22, Benjamin Disraeli was born in 1804. By 
Lamb's Conduit you come to Great Ormond Street, 
once a home of Macaulay (at No. 50), as also of 
Chancellor Thurlow (at No. 44) ; and coming to 
Guilford Street, we face one of the most picturesque 
institutions in the world, the Foundling Hospital, 
established by Coram in 1739. The hospital is 
flanked by Mecklenburg Square and Brunswick 
Square. In Hunter Street leading from Brunswick 
Square (No. 54) John Ruskin was born; and at 48 
Doughty Street, Mecklenburg Square, was once a 
home of Dickens, as No. 14 was of Sydney Smith. 
But the Foundling Hospital itself cannot be passed 
over without a word. It is one of the sights of 
London. To go there for Sunday service and see 
the legion of children alike innocent of their past as 
of their future, mercifully at home here, though else- 
where they brought only shame and misfortune, is to 

[174] 



HERE AND THERE 



be touched and pleased in a manner rare in this city. 
In London you can either be amused or have your 
heart wrung. The Foundling Hospital affects you 
somewhat more delicately. How wise was Captain 
Thomas Coram to establish this foundation ! 
Christ's Hospital, Charterhouse, the Foundling — 
such benefactions can be found only in rich and an- 
cient cities, where wealth has long since ceased to 
be a novelty, as it is in some American cities, where 
the best that many a child of fortune seems able to 
do is to go to Florida in a private car and hire a 
floor in the hotel. 

On the other side of the British Museum lies Soho 
with its French atmosphere and table d'hote res- 
taurants. Someone has written a book on the Bo- 
hemia of London, and Soho is an extensive prov- 
ince of that Bohemia. But I should not care to write 
a book about it. This bringing of Bohemianism to 
the middle classes and the casserole within reach of 
the masses shall win no renown from me. It enables 
a few Frenchmen and Italians to grow rich by sup- 
plying people with food they would not eat at home. 
Some of the restaurants, however, notably the 
" Gourmet " in Lisle Street, or the " Rendezvous " 
in Dean Street, are a pleasant diversion in seasons of 
dullness. They are, at all events, a relief from the 
more substantial type of English restaurant (out- 
side the great hotels) where feeding is still regarded 
as merely the next step to slaughtering. The Soho 

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LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

table d'hote has brought cosmopolitanism within 
reach of the shop assistant, and theatrical men and 
women come here to get their fill of atmosphere, so 
essential to their temperaments. I remember some 
years ago ordering in a Wardour Street Italian res- 
taurant a dinner in an incredible number of courses 
for an infinitesimal sum. But the present-day 
French table d'hote does not ruin itself by any such 
excesses. Sooner or later, however, everyone in Lon- 
don (excepting some seven million people) comes 
to it, and is convinced that there is a " something 
about these foreign places," a something hard to de- 
fine, but for which the Englishman hungers as much 
as anybody. Familiar faces people the tables, faces 
he has seen beyond the footlights of the Royalty 
theater or a music hall, and that, together with the 
foreign accent of the waiters, bodies forth a stirring, 
thrilling Bohemia. The truth is, I find it impossible 
to take English Bohemianism seriously. There is 
plenty of good sense and, among the more intelli- 
gent classes, a growing if secret disregard for the 
heavier sort of conventionality. But for the Bo- 
hemian life as it is understood on the Continent, the 
average Englishman is about as adaptable as the 
average polar bear to an equatorial jungle. 

In the early pages of this book I have already 
said something concerning the literary associations 
of Soho. But it has historical and artistic associa- 
tions as well. The Duke of Monmouth lived on the 

[176] 



HERE AND THERE 



south side of Soho Square in 1681, and another per- 
sonality, perhaps as real to us as the Pretender's, 
lived in Golden Square — I mean Nicholas Nickleby. 
Angelica Kaufmann, the artist, also lived here. 
This was the artists' quarter once, as Chelsea is now. 
Sir Thomas Lawrence lived in Greek Street, Hazlitt, 
as we have seen, died at No. 6 Frith Street, and Dean 
Street was populous with painters. Benjamin West 
died at 14 Newman Street and Fanny Kemble was 
bom there. Berners Street was the home of Opie, 
Fuseli and Henry Bone, and No. 54 was the scene 
of Theodore Hook's famous Berners Street hoax — 
a foolish hoax it seems, of sending tradesmen, hun- 
dreds of them, to call at a certain hour upon a poor, 
bewildered lady. I have never heard that Theodore 
Hook was horsewhipped, but that was surely what he 
deserved, rather than the reputation of a wit. He 
once sent a man a forged invitation to an evening 
party of George IV at Carlton House, and the man 
was refused admission by the servants. George IV 
upon hearing of it, invited the man to visit him the 
next day, and apologized for his servants. But 
Theodore Hook remained unharmed — the wit ! 

Of my score of unwritten chapters, the parks of 
London should have at least two. St. James's Park, 
Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens form a system 
that any city might envy. In size, of course, all 
three together are smaller than the Bois in Paris, 
and I believe even New York's Central Park is 

[177] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

larger. But they wind whimsically through a large 
portion of London, broken only by Piccadilly at 
Constitution Hill. To Henry VIII London owes 
both St. James's and Hyde Parks, though James I 
was chiefly concerned with the beautifying of the 
first. Since each of them has a character of its own, 
I suppose St. James's would be notable for its legis- 
lators and members of Parliament (if you could tell 
them apart from clerks), Hyde Park for fashion, 
and Kensington Gardens for perambulators. 

Peter Pan lives in Kensington Gardens. His 
statue, presented by Mr. (now Sir James) Bar- 
rie, is there for all the children to see by day; but 
it is at night, when the gates are closed, that 
Peter and Tinker Bell make the copses ring with 
their multiform activities. Hook is there and 
the Redskins, and all the Darling children astir 
in their dreams, lured by the wily Peter. The 
keeper of an English park is, I believe, called a 
ranger, and that is the post and title I covet 
— the Ranger of Kensington Gardens ! Peter him- 
self should bow to my will, for all his terrible 
boldness, and, unless I pleased, there should be no 
crowding adventures, no houses built for Wendy, and 
forever apart should be kept the boys and their 
dearest foes, Hook and Smee and the pirates ! I 
sometimes wonder whether Mr. Barrie is the ranger, 
and whether that is how he has learned so much of 
the habits of Peter. He has long lived in the neigh- 

£178] 



HERE AND THERE 



borhood of the gardens. It would be fine to expose 
him, to show that he is no creative artist at all, but 
a mere reporter, a transcriber of fact. But Mr. 
Barrie is a canny, reticent man, so what can you do.? 

I had almost forgotten Kensington Palace, far 
more beautiful than Buckingham, where Queen Vic- 
toria came to live after her accession. But at Ken- 
sington Palace she was bom (1819) and there she 
heard the news of her succession (June 20, 1837) 
and to this day you may see her rooms and her child- 
ish belongings, always the suffragettes permitting. 
For be it known that no Wells-Fargo express messen- 
ger was ever half so nervous about the bandits James 
as the average policeman, custodian, or Home Secre- 
tary is at this moment about the suffragettes. The 
present Queen of England was also born at Kensing- 
ton Palace. I say nothing of Buckingham Palace, in 
St. James's Park, because there is nothing to say ; 
nor anything of the memorial to Queen Victoria in 
front of it because there is too much to be said. It 
is not universally admired. But the sleepers in 
Green Park, when they are not gazing skyward, 
seem nevertheless to be gazing toward the memorial 
and the Palace. Those monuments therefore cannot 
be devoid of interest. But then the sleepers on the 
grass are the real leisure class of London, and the 
average sightseer cannot vie with them. 

As to Hyde Park, that is the safety valve of 
modern England. I know that what appeals to most 

[179I 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

people in Hyde Park, Is the " Ring " and " Rotten 
Row," the carriages filled with pretty and other 
women, guided by the most priestlike coachmen in 
the world (so much does their calling seem a reli- 
gion to them), and the fat horses of urban eques- 
trians, who ride obviously only for the sake of their 
livers ; and the church parade of a spring Sunday is 
a sight well worth seeing. But the public speakers 
in the region of the Marble Arch are the real attrac- 
tion of Hyde Park. I have never listened to any 
of them more than three minutes at a time. I doubt 
if anyone has listened as long. But the mere fact 
that those orators can come to Cumberland Gate and 
attack anything, keeps England even now the most 
conservative country on earth (China having be- 
come a republic). Ibsen once gloried in the Russian 
autocracy because of the love of liberty it breeds. 
There all is repression, in England all is expression. 
That is why liberal ideas make such comparatively 
small headway. Mr. Hyndman has recently com- 
plained that in a lifetime devoted to Socialism, he 
has seen only the most infinitesimal advance. Had 
he but succeeded in suppressing free speech in Hyde 
Park and elsewhere, England might now have been 
his. As it is, everybody can say anything and all 
creeds and all words tend to neutralize each other. 
Besides orators, Hj^de Park grows innumerable cro- 
cuses that herald the spring into London and, along 
the Serpentine, wise wading birds stalk at noon-day. 

[i8o] 



HERE AND THERE 



Tender are the greens and delightful the shade in 
summer, yet somehow the place is unspeakably 
melancholy if you are alone. Here too, are numer- 
ous children, but not so many as in Kensington Gar- 
dens. 

But the place for wading birds, or other birds, or 
beasts, is Regent's Park. All menageries are, I sup- 
pose, more or less alike. Nevertheless the menagerie 
in Regent's Park strikes one as different from all 
other menageries. Its Outdoor Monkeys and In- 
door Apes, its Southern Aviary, its Northern 
Pheasantry — the very labeling of its precints is 
different. Originally the King's beasts were kept 
near the Tower, and in James First's day there was 
a menagerie of a sort in St. James's Park. Bird- 
cage Walk still bears the name it had when Charles 
II, so it is said, hung his bird-cages on the trees there. 
But now all the wild life in London is in Regent's 
Park. One may spend days there without weary- 
ing of observing the beasts. It is like a rehearsal, 
a vast prelude to the appearance of man in the order 
of evolution. In the struggle for existence man in- 
evitably triumphed, and the beasts seem to say, 
" Very well, you have us in captivity, but it seems a 
poor trick since it was at you and not at us that 
nature had been aiming from the beginning." 

The lion and the lamb do not actually lie down 
together in Regent's Park, but nevertheless it is 
almost in the Golden Age. Certain fortunate peo- 

[i8i] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

pie have houses that actually stand in the park. The 
park is their front yard, their garden — than which 
luxury can no farther go. It is another of Lon- 
don's many anomalies. Instead of being carefully, 
ceaselessly warned to keep off the grass, to leave 
all hope behind, and so on, those fabulous people are 
permitted to live there! Like another Marco Polo 
I would fain carry this news overseas, wondering the 
while whether the rangership of this Park also is 
bespoken. 

If all those animals could go to the Natural His- 
tory Museum in South Kensington they would see 
themselves as others see them, as we see them. 
There, in the bones and vast remains of their gi- 
gantic ancestors they would recognize that the game 
was up. In the relics of the mastodon, the mam- 
moth, the megatherium and the diplodicus, they 
would see that theirs at present is a losing game, that 
their best days are a million years behind, and that 
for them is approaching the twilight of existence, in- 
deed, the night. Man, the weakling, who used to 
cower before those bygone monsters, now gathers 
their teeth and aptly classifies them in cunning fash- 
ion, for he has risen to power. Perhaps it is as well 
no one takes the beasts to the Museum, or we should 
have what the boy in the history class called a 
" revolt of the pheasants " in dead earnest. 

The Museums in South Kensington, would, I 
fancy, eat considerably into my score of unwritten 

[182] 



HERE AND THERE 



chapters. For how could I describe in little the 
sculptures, the pictures, the loan-collections, the 
metal and woodwork exhibits, or even the leather and 
furniture? It ranges too far afield, extends to too 
many countries and to almost all periods. The 
seven great cartoons of Raphael alone are an ob- 
ject of attraction to people the world over. In the 
matter of textile work and arts and crafts, the South 
Kensington Museum is perhaps unique. Then there 
is the Ceramics collection, the India Museum, the 
Science Museum and I hardly know what not besides. 
I have a confused recollection of seeing scientific 
laboratory apparatus, steam engines and state 
barges dwelling together in intimate neighborhood. 
But perhaps I am falling too much into the cock- 
ney habit of lingering unduly on the glories and 
treasures of London itself, without any regard for 
what lies beyond. There is Kew with its gardens 
and tea-houses, the cockney's delight, where the 
brave and joyous out-door life of the Rivieria and 
the South of France is brought within reach of the 
masses — by means of tea houses ! To be more ex- 
act, it is the tea-gardens in the rear of the houses, 
brilliant with sweet-peas, honeysuckle and holly- 
hocks. Be not deceived about the tea, for it is 
almost never good, but you may pass some very 
agreeable hours in the gardens amid a crowd that 
has changed but little since the days of Dickens. 
And one of the pleasantest walks I know of is from 

[183] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 



Kew Gardens to Richmond and Twickenham along 
the river. The boats, the shining water and the 
shaded path will keep you cool even in midsummer. 
I remember making that walk in August and then 
enjoying the view from the terrace of the Star and 
Garter, that once fashionable inn, unfortunately 
closed since then, because it was losing money. But 
I hear it will reopen, and once again, let us hope, 
the Harry Fokers will give little dinners there as of 
old. Its name alone should save it from perdition. 
Beyond Richmond, attainable by tramway, lies 
Hampton Court, with its memories of Tudor sov- 
ereigns, of Cromwell, the Stuarts and Queen Anne, 
with its numerous pictures, many of them good, its 
Mantegna Gallery with the triumphal procession of 
Caesar, the Garden, the Maze and Bushey Park with 
its tame deer — a bit of Merrie England that really 
looks merrie — in summer. But I see I am drawing 
too far away from my subject. After all my concern 
is London, not England at large. And the vast bulk 
of London lies still untouched. 



[184] 



XII 

THE LONDON OF HOMES 

ALL through this little book, while engaged in 
recording sights and sounds and isolated pic- 
turesque fragments of London, I have been 
conscious of repressing and holding back the vast 
looming body of London that will not consent any 
longer to be excluded — the London of homes. I 
may say at once that to me this is the realest and 
most significant aspect of London. The Temple 
might vanish to-morrow, the Abbey might crumble 
into dust, but London, the broad, the shapeless, the 
home of seven millions of people, would hardly be 
aware of their deletion. You cannot lie down at 
night without a pleasant consciousness of the miles 
upon miles of human habitations and you cannot 
awake in the morning without a comforting sense of 
the solidarity that so huge a city gives you. I have 
felt myself an alien in Paris, and who has not ex- 
perienced the feeling of living in a camp that comes 
to you in New York, where block after block of 
houses is condemned to the use of the northward 
creeping commerce? In London you feel that the 
primary business of the city is to multiply homes. 

[i8s] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 



Everything else is secondary. And that fact alone 
gives life a singular dignity. 

The Londoner now and then complains that his 
ancient landmarks are passing. What would he say 
if he were constantly driven northward and outward 
by the advance of the "skyscraper"? It is small 
wonder that many an American comes to London 
and never leaves it. He finds that this automatic, 
unquestionable respect for the home extends pretty 
much to all his other relations as a human being. 
And I fancy that a hundred ills in American life 
could be traced to nothing worse than the unstable 
equilibrium of American cities. In London, so far 
as that is possible, the equilibrium is stable. 

Londoners often comment unkindly about regions 
of London not their own. Literature is generally 
made in Kensington, Hampstead, Chelsea, or possi- 
bly St. John's Wood. By consequence you hear of 
the dreariness of Brixton, Walham Green, Bays- 
water, Belgravia. I deny that these regions are 
dreary. They provide homes for varying incomes, 
but they all provide homes, in each of which, as Mr. 
Hueffer says, " dwells a strongly individualized hu- 
man being with romantic hopes, romantic fears and 
at the end, an always tragic death." Let those scof- 
fers try the unarmed camp life of an American city 
and the groves of Brixton will seem a pleasant dwell- 
ing-place, and Maida Vale will possess the charm and 
security of Gibraltar. They are not regions to lure 

[i86] 



THE LONDON OF HOMES 



the sightseer, perhaps, but they are London, the 
vast plain of the town life, whilst Bond Street, Pic- 
cadilly or the Strand are mere hillocks thrown up by 
time and the seismic adjustments of life. All the 
" show " part of London shrivels to a minuteness 
against the stupendous background of mere human 
dwelling places, and even the commerce of the city, 
mighty as it is, takes its place as a product, a by- 
product, of the life, not as its only begetter. 

Take St. John's Wood. It is a little home city 
in itself, and by no means the least important one 
of the many that go to fuse into the epic mass of 
London. " There are certain people we cannot 
imagine living in St. John's Wood," says Mr. Alan 
Montgomery Eyre in his excellent book on the 
" Wood," " and there are certain people we cannot 
imagine living anywhere else." It is no news that 
George Eliot lived there, it would be startling news 
if Lord Rothschild were to move thither. A hun- 
dred years ago that suburb did not exist, yet within 
the span of a human life it has seen some of Eng- 
land's greatest spirits among its residents. 

It was to a sparsely settled suburban region that 
Thomas Hood came in 1841 and settled at 17 Elm 
Tree Road, overlooking Lord's Cricket ground, and 
Dickens and Douglas Jerrold were doubtless frequent 
visitors. Two years later Hood moved to No. 28 
Finchley Road, as a tablet indicates — now the 
home of the St. John's Wood Arts Club. An arts 

[187] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

club in the Wood is inevitable. For there, as Mr. 
Beckles Willson observes in his introduction to Mr. 
Eyre's book, " in a thousand and one gardens, a 
thousand and one miniature groves of almond and 
lilac half hidden behind ivied walls, a brave last 
stand is being made against the Philistines." 

Always St. John's Wood has been the city of ref- 
uge for those who fled Philistinism as well as the 
overpowering and (to some fugitives) intolerable, 
respectability of more conventional London. As 
early as 1830 Shelley's friends, Thomas Jefferson 
Hogg and his wife (Jane Williams) made their home 
in the Wood and ultimately, many years after Mrs. 
Hogg's walks and talks with Shelley by the Bay of 
Spezia, they dwelt at '33 Clifton Road. Huxley 
subsequently came as a neighbor to the Hoggs, and 
a friend of Huxley's wrote him in 1853, " If your 
Wood continues to be a hot-bed for Deists and doubt- 
ers, you should get its name changed from St. John's 
to St. Thomas's." At that time Huxley was re- 
garded as a terrible person who was plotting to rob 
the world of its religion. A gentleman still living, 
records Mr. Eyre, saw written upon the gate of 
Huxley's house these lines : 

Pray for this foolish man within. 
Who dares to mock at God's decrees, 

Whose heart is full of pride and sin. 
Go crave his pardon on thy knees. 

[i88] 



THE LONDON OF HOMES 



And one pious father took his two small boys to 
this house ; " to show you how wicked the world is, 
boys, there is a man living in that house who has 
openly said that he does not believe in Noah, or in 
the Ark. Not only that," added the father to the 
marveling children, " but he declares his great- 
grandfather was an ape. So that he adds a delib- 
erate lie to unbelief." For forty years Huxley 
lived within this alluring Wood; first at 14< Waverley 
Place, where he lost his firstborn, a son ; later at 26 
Abbey Place (now £3 Abercorn Place), where Dar- 
win often visited him. This house he subsequently 
gave over to Tyndall, and built No. 4 Marlborough 
Place, to the furnishing of which Herbert Spencer 
contributed a clock. Time, he deemed, was the 
most valuable asset to such a mind as Huxley's ; and 
perhaps he himself remembered that he had a Sys- 
tem to complete and that the span of life is short. 
Well, Spencer completed his system and time, once 
his precious ally, has now almost outgrown it for 
him — treacherous Time! If I had my way, all 
clocks should be deleted from the planet. Ulti- 
mately both Huxley and Spencer abandoned Lon- 
don and the Wood — Huxley fleeing to Eastbourne 
and Spencer to Brighton. Gone are those agnos- 
tic philosophers, and a new era of scientists has 
come into being, scientists like Sir William Ramsay 
and Sir Oliver Lodge, already touched, particularly 
Sir Oliver, by the great wave of mysticism now 

[189] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

breaking over the globe. Huxley and Spencer 
would have smiled at mysticism, and psychical re- 
search must have left them cold. 

George Eliot and her husband, George Henry 
Lewes, came to the Wood in 1863. This was any- 
thing but Dante's " selva oscura," for to those two 
Georges, husband and wife, at their home, 21 North 
Bank, nearly all the genius of England was wont 
to come of a Sunday. " My good friend Herbert 
Spencer " was a constant visitor to this Sybil- 
line lady, whom he very nearly married, and Brown- 
ing and Tennyson were among the number that 
gathered round her fireplace. From that spot, by the 
way, now rises the great chimney of the Central Elec- 
tric Lighting Company. I have often wandered about 
among the groves of that Wood, wondering whether 
any greatness is there to-day. Actors, painters 
and some writers populate it even unto this day, 
but if any greatness remains there it is hidden from 
us. But the great point is, it is a fastness of many 
thousand homes. 

Even the Londoner who " knows his London," it 
has been said, knows probably no more than the 
London that is " his." The London that is " mine " 
happens to be Chelsea, and I certainly know that 
better than other regions. Chelsea chances to be 
particularly favored with landmarks, but if you 
trace it out, all London is a palimpsest of landmarks. 
For it is a city of a great age and many incarna- 

[190] 



THE LONDON OF HOMES 



tions, and all the bygone dead Londons are so very 
numerous and must have been very powerful to cre- 
ate the greatest town in the world almost in a swamp. 
Every day new landmarks are being unearthed, and 
onl}' yesterday the County Council placed a bronze 
tablet a few doors away, round the corner from 
where this is written, to the memory of Mrs. Gas- 
kell, author of " Cranford," who was born at 91 
Cheyne Walk, a hundred and tliree years ago. A 
few steps away, at the very end of Cheyne Walk, 
No. 118, stands a tiny house of blackened brick with 
squat upper windows, that a successful bank clerk 
would sniff at. A tablet records that Turner lived 
and painted there. That is where he hid himself 
from his friends until his death, in 1851, and rose 
early every morning to gaze at the sunrise from his 
not very exalted roof, which led his neighbors to 
believe him a retired sailor. I gi'ant that this kind 
of thing is exceptional, that all residential London 
is not Chelsea, but much that is interesting is scat- 
tered wide. Besides, I am no longer generalizing, 
but merely making a brief survey of certain portions 
of London. At Beaufort Street, leading to Batter- 
sea Bridge, that Whistler loved to paint, stands 
More's Garden, a building that takes its name from 
Sir Thomas, the author of " Utopia," who actually 
had a garden and a house as well. Li More's Gar- 
den even now dwells an author not devoid of Utopian 
hopes of another sort ; I mean Mr. Jerome, the au- 

[191] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

thor of « Tlie Passing of the Third Floor Back." 
A step away is No. 74; Cheyne Walk, once a home 
of Whistler's, and at the comer of Church Street 
is Chelsea Old Church, where Sir Thomas More lies 
buried. There is a legend that a man who had once 
lost himself across the river in what is now Batter- 
sea (I could lose myself there now) found his way 
again by the bells of this church, and therefore pre- 
sented it with another bell. I have not mentioned 
Crosby Hall, once the property of Richard III and 
later of Sir Thomas More, the finest house in Lon- 
don when first built (1466), because it was only re- 
cently moved here from Bishopsgate, and only the 
doors and windows of the original remain. At Dan- 
Ters Street, where now stands a bakery, once stood 
Danvers House, whose chatelaine, Lady Danvers, 
was often visited here by Bacon and Dr. Donne, and 
in Church Street once resided Bishop Atterbury, Dr. 
Arbuthnot and Dean Swift. It is a typical old Lon- 
don street, and to this day you have but to step into 
it to feel yourself in the eighteenth century. At 
one end of it, not the Cheyne Walk end, lives Mr, 
William De Morgan, the author of " Joseph Vance," 
thus still giving it a literary character. And the 
other day he was kind and neighborly enough to 
show me the spot in Cheyne Row where he first began, 
in 1872, to make in very small quantities the De 
Morgan Pottery and the De Morgan Lustre. A 
church now stands upon the site, and Mr. De Mor- 

[192] 



THE LONDON OF HOMES 



gan is occupied in molding delightful characters in 
fiction in place of pottery. At No. 5, a few doors 
from Mr. De Morgan's old abode, is Carlyle's house, 
now a museum devoted to his memory. There is the 
bed of Jane Welsh Carlyle, and there the study and 
the table and the books of that inspired peasant of 
Ecclefechan, who came as a much-needed lash to 
the salf-satisfied Victorian Briton. Here he wrote 
the " French Revolution " and " Frederick the 
Great." His more personal associations interest me 
less than those of almost any other great man, but 
those associations are here. In the public gardea 
in Cheyne Walk is his statue and a square off the 
King's Road bears his name. When Mr. De Mor- 
gan, the last of the more genial Victorians, first came 
to Cheyne Row, Carlyle was still the great man of 
Chelsea. 

There is scarce a house in Cheyne Walk the owners 
of which I do not envy. These are not all mere 
museums but dwellings in comfortable active com- 
mission. They all have the view of the river and of 
Battersea Park beyond, and within them is the tran- 
quillity of centuries of peace. At 16 Cheyne Walk 
Rossetti once lived and there Meredith almost, but 
not quite, joined him. The story goes that Ros- 
setti's table habits displeased Meredith, who paid a 
quarter's rent down and never came. At No. 4 
lived and died George Eliot, as imposing and tragic a 
figure as any in Chelsea, or in London, in her time. 

[193] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

A little farther along on the Chelsea Embankment 
stand a number of little palaces of which Old Swan 
House and Clock House are not so little. Every 
morning I pass them and set my watch by the clock 
on Clock House, and look for the shimmer of copper 
in the many windows of Old Swan House. A great 
number of shining copper vases and other vessels 
are always being cleaned by industrious maids. In 
my London of homes Chelsea occupies a large place, 
perhaps too large a place. Set a little back from 
the Embankment in Royal Hospital Road is the 
Chelsea Hospital with its fine garden, where you 
may see the old veterans that survived Balaclava 
and Inkerman, some of them, sunning themselves at 
ease with dignity. Walpole house once stood where 
the west wing of the Hospital stands, and Pope and 
Swift were frequent visitors. At the corner of Tite 
Street and the Embankment lives Mr. John Sargent, 
and in Tudor House near by was another of the 
many homes of Whistler. But one could go on for- 
ever chronicling Chelsea. 

By rights I suppose I ought to have begun with 
Mayfair and Park Lane, and point to such " homes " 
as Londonderry House, Dorchester House, or 
Grosvenor House as examples. For some reason, 
however, I seem unable to do that. When a house 
becomes vast enough you somehow find it difficult to 
class it with mere homes. Such a house as Dorches- 
ter House, for so long the American Embassy, seems 

[194I 




Thomas Carlyle Statue on Chelsea Embankment 



THE LONDON OF HOMES 



to be meant for other functions aside from mere liv- 
ing. And to a certain extent all Mayfair seems to 
share in that distinction. Belgravia is on the border 
line. I have often wondered who lives in those large 
uninteresting houses, and to this day I do not know. 
Kensington, however, seems less mysterious. Some 
of the pleasantest little houses in the world are to be 
found in the squares and lanes of Kensington. Some 
of them I have long measured with my eye and marked 
for inquiry against the time when I desert Chelsea. 
I hear of no such centers as Gore House in Lady 
Blessington's day, when everybody who was anybody 
in art or literature frequented it. The very house 
itself has now disappeared in the foundations of 
Albert Hall. Nor is Holland House the same magnet 
it was in the days when Macaulay frequented it. 
But upon Campden Hill and in the numerous squares 
and streets on both sides of the Kensington High 
Street much art and literature is made, and many 
pleasant and unpretentious people dwell. Being ac- 
quainted with a number of them I can vouch for both 
characteristics, though I make no doubt there are 
others as well. 

Holland Park, Ladbroke Grove and Westbourne 
Grove are again mysterious like Belgravia. But 
St. John's Wood is to my certain knowledge popu- 
lated by at least some actors and many painters, 
and its claim to past distinction, as I have endeav- 
ored to show, is indisputable. 

[195] 



LONDON: AN INTIMATE PICTURE 

Indeed, letters and the arts seem to be tending 
west and north. In Shakespeare's and even in John- 
son's day, it was east and south. Hampstead is a 
favorite, not only with well-to-do bankers, but with 
well-to-do writers, also. And literary associations 
are numerous in both Hampstead and Highgate, 
where S. T. Coleridge lived for so long and snuffled, as 
has been said, concerning " sumjcct " and " omject," 
and other philosophical innovations from Germany. 
He lies buried in a vault of the Grammar School ad- 
joining the Highgate cemetery, the final resting- 
place of George Eliot, Herbert Spencer, and Michael 
Faraday. But Hampstead goes beyond the nine- 
teenth century. Early in the eighteenth it was a 
more or less fashionable spa, where folk went to 
take the waters, and even in the eighteenth century 
it was already a favorite place with men of letters. 
Sir Richard Steele spent many a pleasant session at 
the inn called " The Upper Flask," and Sir Joshua 
Reynolds and Gainsborough drove out there in order 
to breakfast on fresh milk and eggs, and the Kit-Kat 
Club held most of its meetings there. Dr. Johnson 
used to trudge out to see his ailing wife there, and 
Voltaire, when he was in England, 1726-29, visited a 
Quakers' Meeting House there, for he was in sympa- 
thy with Quakerism in his hatred of war. Leigh 
Hunt lived there in a cottage and thither Cowden- 
Clarke brought him the first poems of the youthful 
Keats, and soon Keats himself, who " was sud- 

[196] 



THE LONDON OF HOMES 



denly made a familiar of the household." Keats 
took lodgings in Well Walk in 1817, and in. 
1818 he went to live with Charles Brown at 
Lawn Bank, in John Street, until 1820, and there 
wrote " Endymion " and much of his best work, 
including the ode to the nightingale that haunted 
the garden. Tennyson's mother lived at Rose 
Mount in Flask Walk until her death in 1865, 
and the poet devotedly visited her there during 
her life. And Church Row, one of the finest old 
streets in England, has a veritable shrine in the 
Church of St. John, where lie the remains of Con- 
stable, the painter, Sir Walter Besant and George 
du Maurier, and those of many other notable folk. 
Among the living lions of Church Row, in a house 
with a fine eighteenth century garden, is Mr. H. G. 
Wells, who sits there criticising life in a new kind of 
novel, a kind that instead of soothing the weary 
Titan after his day's labor, fills his mind with a mul- 
titude of ideas — a fact that many honest readers 
resent. In that house I had the good fortune (if 
I may brag) of hearing some of the wittiest talk 
in England. But — if I am not careful I shall im- 
agine myself at the beginning instead of ajb the end 
of this book. 



The End. 



[197] 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abel, Dr. Thomas, 125 
Adams, John Quincy, 117 
Addison, Joseph, 27, 47, 74, 

90, 111, 146 
Adelphi Terrace, 21, 22 
Admiralty Arch, 128 
^neas, 167 
Agincourt, 143 
Ainsworth, Harrison, 121 
Albany, The, 50 
Aldermanbury, 104 
Aldgate, 110, 126 
Aldwvch, 30, 31 
Alfred, King, 122 
AUe.yl^, Edward, 113, 114, 120 
Alsatia, 19, 75 
Amadis de Gaul, 119 
Amen Corner, 82, 83 
Amen Court, 83 
American Embassy, 194 
American stock exchange, 110 
Andre, Major, 138 
Andrews, Lancelot — Bishop, 

114, 117 
Angell, Norman, 132 
Anne, Queen, 79, 144, 145, 184 
Anti-Socialist Society, 5 
Apsley House, 56, 57, 160 
Arbuthnot, Dr., 192 
Archbishops of York, 130 
Argyll, Duke of, 139 
Armories, The, 124 
Arnold, Matthew, 138 
Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 138 
Arundel, Philip Howard, 125 



Ascham, Roger — Tomb of, 84 
Atterbury, Bishop, 192 
Authorized Version, 114 
Aveline of Lancaster, 141 

Bacon, Lord, 16, 18, 69, 91, 

164, 192; and Shakespeare, 

18 
Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 164 
Bacon, Robert, 115 
Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, 

64 
Balfour, Arthur, 149, 150 
Bank of England, 70, 78, 96, 

109 
Banqueting Hall, 129 
Barker, Granville, 21 
Barrier, Sir James, 178, 179 
Bartholomew Fair, 88 
Bath House, 55 
Bathurst, Lord, 56 
Battersea, 192 
Battle, Thomas de, 75 
Bayswater, 57, 186 
Beaconsfield, 134, 137 
Beauchamp Tower, 125 
Beauclerk, Lady Diana, 72 
Beauclerk, Topham, 72 
Beaufort, Margaret, 144, 145 
Beaumont, 100, 113, 142 
Bedlam, 116 
Beerbohm, Max, 12 
Belgravia, 186, 195 
Bell Yard, 78 
Bellini, Gentile, 156 



[20l] 



INDEX 



Bellini, Giovanni, 156 
Bentham, 148 

Berlin, compared with Lon- 
don, 7 
Besant, Sir Walter, 148, 197 
Big Ben, 134 
Billee, Little, 167 
Billingsgate, 113, 117, 118 
Bishop of London, 78 
Bishopsgate, 192 
Black Prince, 90, 99, 122, 142 
Blackstone (lawyer), 63, 90 
Blake, 166 

Blenheim, drums of, 124 
Blessington, Lady, 8, 195 
Bloody Tower, 121 
Bloomsbury, 173 
Bliicher, 170 

Board of Education, 113 
Bohemia of London, 175 
Bohun, Eleanor de, 142 
Boleyn, Anne (Queen), 100, 

121, 125, 130 
Bolt Court, 73 
Bone, Henry, 177 
Bonheur, Rosa, 162 
Boswell, 71 
Botticelli, 153 
Boucher, 170 
Bourchier, Elizabeth, 106 
Bow Street Police Court, 28 
Brick Court, 62 
Bridges 

Battersea, 191 

Blackfriars, 77 

London, 103, 107, 111, 116, 
117 

Tower, 116 

Westminster, 148 
Brighton, 189 
Brixton, 186 
Bronte, Charlotte, 82 
Brooks, Phillips, 137 
Brown, Charles, 197 



Brown, Ford Madox, 166 
Browning, 140, 152, 190 
Buccleuch, Duke of, 132 
Buckingham, Duke of, 19, 

121, 145 
Buckingham's chapel 146 
Buckle (historian), 73 
Bulwer-Lytton, 55 
Bunhill Fields, 93, 105 
Bunyan, John, 93, 113, 164 
Burke, Edmund, 4, 45, 55, 61, 

64, 150 
Burleigh, Lady, 143 
Burlington Arcade, 53 
Burlington House, 50 
Burne-Jones, 166, 174 
Burns, 140 
Burns, Mr. John, 9 
Butler, Samuel, tomb of, 26 
Button's Coffee-house, 27 
Byron, 43, 56 



Calais, 146 
Calvin, 173 

Cambridge, Duke of, 134 
Campden Hill, 4, 195 
Campbell, Thomas, 136 
Canaletto, 70, 157, 170 
Canning, George, 66, 137 
Canterbury Pilgrims, 116 
Carlton House, 45, 177 
Carlton House Terrace, 46 
Carlyle, home of, 7, 193 
Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 193 
Caroline, Queen, 146 
Carthusian Brothers, 89 
Carthusian monastery, 90 
Castlereagh, Lord, 44, 137 
Caxton, 75, 137, 147, 148 
Cemeteries 
Highgate, 196 
Nonconformist, 93 
Centers of London, 109 
[202] 



INDEX 



Central Electrical Lighting 

Co., 190 
Central Meat Market, 88 
Cervantes, 119 
Chancellor of the Exchequer, 

133 
Chantry Chapel, 147 
Chapman, 101 

Chapter House, 135, 145, 14T 
Charing Cross, 99, 127, 128, 

146 
Charing Cross, Station, 16 
Charles I., 130, 143, 149, 173 
Charles I.'s Queen, portrait 

of, 163 
Charles II., 131, 133, 145, 181 
Chatterton, 82, 94, 140 
Chaucer, 24, 99, 101, 112, 113, 

139, 140 
Cheapside, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 

102, 109 
Chelsea, 57, 177, 186, 190, 191, 

194, 195 
Chelsea Embankment, 8, 193, 

194 
Chepe, see Cheapside 
Cheshire Cheese, 73 
Childs, George W., 137 
Choate, 114 
Christie's, 45 

Christ's Hospital, 83, 175 
Churches 

All Hallows, 98, 117, 118 

Catholic Cathedral, 148 

Chelsea Old, 192 

Christ, 83, 174 

Peterborough Cathedral, 144 

St. Andrew's, 94 

St. Bartholomew-the-Great, 
86 

St. Bartholomew-the-Less, 
85 

St. Bride's, 75 



[203] 



Churches — continued 

St. Clement Danes, 31, 72 

St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, 
71 

St. Edmund's, 111, 142 

St. George, 116 

St. Giles, Cripplegate, 104, 
106, 107, 140 

St. James's, 49 

St. John, 197 

St. John's Chapel, 123, 124 

St. Helen's, 107 

St. Lawrence Jewry, 104 

St. Magnus Martyr, 117 

St. Margaret's, 134, 135, 136 

St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, 
16 

St. Mary, Aldermanbury, 
104 

St. Mary's, Whitechapel, 126 

St. Mary le Strand, 31 

St. Nicholas, 142 

St. Paul's (Covent Gar- 
den), 26, 59, 77, 78, 79, 
81, 82, 88, 95, 96, 135 

St. Peter ad Vincula, 125 

St. Peter's, 110 

St. Peter's in Rome, 79 

St. Saviour's, 107, 112, 114, 
120 

St. Sepulchre's, 83, 84, 94 

St. Vedast's, 97 

Savoy Chapel, 24 

Temple, 63, 87, 94 
City of London, 58 
City of Westminster, 58 
Civil Service Examinations, 51 
Clarendon, Lord, 54, 63 
Clarendon House, 54 
Claude, 162 
Clement's Inn, 5, 33 
Clerkenwell, 94 
Clifford's Inn, 70 



INDEX 



Clock House Palace, 194 

Close, the, 83 

Clubs 

Army and Navy, 39 

Athenaeum, 39 

Automobile (Royal), 39 

Badminton, 55 

Brooks's, 42 

Carlton, 38 

Cavalry, 56 

Conservative, 43 

Devonshire, 42 

Garrick, 26 

Guards', 38 

Isthmian, 55 

Junior Carlton, 38 

Junior Naval and Military, 
55 

Kit-Kat, 74, 196 

Lyceum, 56 

Marlborough, 38 

Mermaid, 101 

National Liberal, 5 

Naval and Military, 55 

Reform, 38 

St. James, 55 

St. John's Wood Arts, 187 

Samuel Weller Social, 115 

Savage, 23 

Savile, 56 

Travellers', 38 

United Service, 39 

White's, 42 
Clubs, decadence of, 37 
Cobden, Richard, 138 
"Cock," The (tavern), 4 
Coeur de Lion's Regent, 

123 
Coke (lawyer), 63 
Coleridge, 67, 140, 196 
Colet, 81 
Colleges 

London University, 173 



[204] 



Colleges — continued 

Magdalene, 136 

St. John's, Cambridge 
Colvin, Sir Sidney, 56 
Commons, House of, 149, 150 
Continental Congress, 68 
Congreve, 138 
Constable, 161, 162, 197 
Constitution Hill, 178 
Coram, Captain Thomas, 174, 

175 
Cornhill, 107 
Corot, 162 
Correggio, 152, 154 
Cosimo, Piero di, 153 
Cotton, Sir John, 173 
Council Chamber, 103 
Covent Garden, 24 
Coverdale, Miles, 117 
Cowden-Clarke, 196 
Cowley, 140 
Cowper, 138, 148 
Crashaw, 90 
Crevelli, 156 
Criminal Courts, 83 
Crome, 161, 162 
Cromwell, Oliver, 66, 106, 124, 

133, 136, 158, 173, 184 
Cromwell vault, 145 
Crouchback, Edmund, 141 
Crown Jewels, 120, 122 
Cumberland Gate, 180 
Cuyp, 157, 168, 169 

Danvers House, 192 
Dan vers, Ladv, 192 
Darwin, Charles, 138, 189 
da Vinci, Leonardo, 154 
Dean's Yard, 148 
Defoe, Daniel, 93, 106, 110 
De Hooch, Peter, 157, 159 
Delane, Walter, 75 
De Morgan Lustre, 192 



INDEX 



De Morgan Pottery, 192 

De Morgan, William, 192, 193 

Denham, 140 

Derby, Countess of, 144, 145 

Derby, Lord, 8, 134 

Devereux, Robert, 121, 125 

Devonshire, Duke of, 54 

Devonshire House, 54, 55 

Dickens, 29, 55, 76, 140, 174, 
183, 187 

Dido, 167 

"Divine Fire," author of, 11 

Doctors Commons, 78 

Doge's Palace, 155 

Domesday Book, 68 

Donne, Dr., 192 

Dorchester House, 160, 194 

Downing, George (ambas- 
sador), 133 

Drvden, 4, 26, 90, 139, 147, 148 

Dudley, 125 

Dulwich College, 113, 114, 120 

Du Maurier, 167, 197 

Eastbourne, 189 

Eastlake, 166 

Edgar, King, 135 

Edward I., 146 

Edward H., 65 

Edward IH., 90, 99, 146 

Edward VT., 146 

Edward the Confessor, 135, 
146, 148 

Edward, Duke of Bucking- 
ham, 121 

Eldon, Lord, 63, 174 

Eleanor, Queen, 99, 146 

Eliot, George, 187, 190, 193, 
196 

Elizabeth, Queen, 34, 71, 100, 
121, 136, 144, 146 

Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, 
144 



[205] 



Elizabeth, Queen of York, 145 
Elizabeth's "Salt," Queen, 122 
Embankment, Thames, 63 
Embankment, Victoria, 15 
Erasmus, 81 
Essex, 149 
Essex Court, 69 
Essex, Earl of, 121, 125 
Essex House, 34 
Evelyn, 21, 54 

Eyre, Alan Montgomery, 187, 
188 

Fabian Society, 5, 33 

Faraday, Michael, 196 

Fawkes' prison, Guy, 125 

Fielding, Henry, 28, 47, 173 

Fire of 1666, Great, 85, 111, 
118 

Fisher, Bishop, 118 

Fishmongers, Guild of, 112 

Fleet prison, 76 

Fletcher, 113, 114, 148 

Forum, the, 109 

Fountain Court, 104 

Fox, Charles James, 42, 53, 55, 
138 

Poxe (martyrologist), 106 

Fragonards, 170 

Franklin, Benjamin, 17, 86, 
88 

Franklin, Sir John, 131 

Freemason's Court, 110 

Frobisher, Sir Martin (navi- 
gator), 106 

Fuseli, 177 

Gainsborough, 40, 161, 162, 

169, 196 
Galleries 

Diplomat (Royal Acad- 
emy), 51 

Dulwich, 168 



INDEX 



Galleries — continued 
Hertford House, 169 
Leicester, 12 
Mantegna, 184 
National, 16, 151, 152, 160, 

161, 164, 170 
National Portrait, 163, 164 
Tate, 162, 164 

Gardens 

Kensington, 177, 178, 181 
Kew, 183, 184 

Garraway's Coffee House, 110 

Garrick, David, 22, 140 

Gaskell, Mrs., 191 

George U., 70, 133, 146 

George III., 68 

George IV., 169, 177 

Georgiana, Duchess of Dev- 
onshire, 54 

Ghirlandajo, 154 

Gibbon, 148 

Gifford, Bishop of Win- 
chester, 113 

Giorgiones, 155 

Gilpin, John, 96 

Gissing, George, 172 

Gladstone, 8, 66, 137 

Gloucester, 122 

Gloucester, Duchess of, 142 

Goethe, 173 

"Golden Legend," 75 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 58, 59, 60, 
62, 64, 71, 72, 73, 78, 81, 82, 
113, 140 

Gordon, monument of, 15, 80 

Gore House, 195 

Goring House, 53 

Government buildings, 134 

Gower, 112, 113 

Gozzoli, Benozzo, 154 

Gray's Inn, 69 

Greenwich, Duke of, 139 

Greuze, 170 



[206] 



Grey, Lady Jane, 121, 125 
Grosvenor House, 160, 194 
Grote, George, 90 
Guardi, 170 
Guildhall, 101, 102, 104 
Gwynne, Nell, 39 

Hakluyt, 148 
Halifax, Lord, 138 
Hall, Thomas de, 75 
Hals, Frans, 157, 169 
Halls, 

Albert, 195 

Crosby, 192 

Fishmongers, 112 

Goldsmith's, 97 

Mercer's, 101 

Sadlers', 97, 101 
Hamilton, Lady, home of, 49 
Hampden, 173 
Hampstead, 186, 196 
Hampton Court, 156, 184 
Handel (musician), 140 
Hanover, House of, 146 
"Harlow, Clarissa," 76 
Harvard Chapel, 114 
Harvard College, 120 
Harvard, John, 114, 120 
Harvard, Robert, 114 
Hastings, Lord, 125 
Hastings, Warren, 138, 148 
Havelock, Sir Henry, 90 
Havelock, monument of, 15 
Haymarket, 46 
Hazlitt, Wm., 4, 94, 163, 17T 
Heine, 7, 96 
Henrietta, Queen, 163 
Henry III., 146 
Henry IV., 147 
Henry V., 103, 146 
Henry VI., 123 
Henry VII., 136, 139, 143, 

144, 145, 146 



INDEX 



Henry VIII., 90, 100, 124, 
129, 130, 131, 136, 143, 164, 
178; wife of, 125 
Heraclius, 63 
Herbert, 138 

Herschel (astronomer), 138 
Herrick, 97 
Highgate, 196 
Hobbema, 157, 169 
Hogarth, 70, 88, 99, 161, 162 
Hogg, Thomas Jefferson, 188 
Holbein, 161, 162 
Holborn, 69 
Holborn Viaduct, 94 
Holland House, 195 
Holland, Lord, 138 
Holland Park, 195 
Holly Lodge, 5 
Holy Land, 65 
Home Rule Bill, 149 
Hood, Thomas, 187 
Hook, Theodore, 39, 177 
Horse Guards, 128, 129 
Horsham, 83 
Hospitals 

Bethlehem Royal, 116 
Chelsea, 194 
Foundling, 174, 175 
Guy's, 115 

St. Bartholomew's, 85 
Hotels 

Berkeley, 54 

Carlton, 47, 82 

Cecil, 16 

Chapter Coffee House, 82 

George, 116 

Morley's, 16 

Park Lane, 56 

Piccadilly, 49 

Ritz, 53, 54, 82 

Savoy, 16 

Strand Palace, 16 

Waldorf, 31 



Hotels — continued 

Westminster Palace, 148 
Houndsditch, 126 
Howard, Queen Katherine. 

121, 125 
Howe, Viscount, 138 
Hunt, Holman, 80 
Hunt, Leigh, 196 
Hunter, 138 
Huxley, 188, 189 
Hyde Park Corner, 57, 126 
Hyndman, 180 

Imperial Defense Committee, 

132 
Incorporated Law Society, 68 
India House, 111 
Inner Temple, 63, 63 
Inner Temple Hall, 65 
Inns 

Chaucer's Tabard, 166 
Star and Garter, 184 
Tabard, 116 
White Hart, 115, 116 
Inns of Court 
Clement's, 5, 33 
Clifford's, 70 
Furnival's, 94 
Gray's, 69, 77, 94 
Lincoln's, 61, 66, 68, 69 
Serjeant's, 75 
Staple, 69 
Iron Duke, 80 
Irving, Sir Henry, 29, 140 
Irving, Washington, 88, 143 
Islington, 93 
Italian bankers, 111 



Jacobs, W. W., 126 

James I., 113, 129, 130, 131, 

135, 143, 144, 145, 181 
James, King, 75 
[207] 



INDEX 



Jane, Viscountess Rochford, 

125 
Jerome, 191 
Jerrold, Douglas, 187 
Jerusalem Chamber, 147 
Jessel, Master of the Rolls, 

67 
Jewish bankers, 111 
John, Duke of Argyll and 

Greenwich, 139 
John, King, 123 
John of Gaunt, 90 
John's Anointing Spoon, 

King, 122 
Johnson, Louisa Catherine, 

117 
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 32, 58, 

71, 72, 73, 81, 82, 85, 105, 

113, 133, 140, 162, 195, 196 
Jones, Inigo, 69 
Jonson, Ben, 68, 100, 148, 164, 
Justice, Palace of, 83 

Kant, 173 

Katherine of Aragon, 125 
Kaufmann, Angelica, 177 
Keats, John, 101, 115, 140, 196 
Keble, 138 
Kelvin, Lord, 138 
Kensal Green, 140 
Kensington, 11, 57, 186, 195 
Kensington, South, 182 
Kensington Gore, 57 
Keppel, Admiral, 162 
Kingsley, Charles, 138 
Kingston, Duke of, 74 
Kipling's England, 127 
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 138, 

163 
Knights Templars, 63, 75 

Lady Chapel, 114 
Lamb, Charles, 26, 60, 63, 66, 
83, 94, 111, 163 



[208] 



Lambeth, 116 
Landseer, 166 
Lansdowne, Lord, 138 
Laud, Archbishop, 118 
Law, Mr. Bonar, 11 
Law Courts, 3, 59, 74 
Lawn Bank, 197 
Lawrence, 80, 161 
Lawrence, Lord, 139 
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 177 
Leech, John (artist), 89 
Leicester Galleries, 12 
Leighton, Lord, monument of, 

79 
Lely, Sir Peter, 26, 161 
Les Stokkes Market, 108 
Lewes, George Henry, 190 
"Light of the World, The," 80 
Lincoln's Inn, 61, 66, 68, 69 
Lincoln's Inn Fields, 70, 109 
Lion Tower, 120 
Lion's Gate, 120 
Lippi, Filippino, 153 
Lippi, Lippo, 153 
Livingstone, David, 139 
Lloyd, 110 

Local Government Board, 133 
Locke, 148 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 189 
London House, 44 
Londonderry House, 194 
Longchamp, 123 
Longshanks, Edward, 147 
Lord Mayor, 59, 99, 102, 107, 

129 
Lord Mayor's Show, 100 
Lord's Cricket grounds, 187 
Lords, House of, 149 
Lords of the Privy Council, 

103 
I-o Spagnoletto, 161 
Loti, Pierre, 81 
Lowell, James Russell, 147 



INDEX 



Lucas, E. v., 164 

Ludgate Circus, 76 

Luther, 173 

Lyell (geologist), 138 

Lyttleton, 63 

Lytton, Bulwer, 142, 169 

Macaulay, Lord, 5, 69, 140, 

174 
Macaulay, Zachary, 138, 195 
MacDonald, Ramsey, 150 
Magdalene College, Cam- 
bridge, 136 
Maine, Sir Henry, 138 
Manny, Walter de, 90 
Mansion House, 107, 108, 109 
Mantegna, 158 
Marble Arch, 180 
Mark Lane Undergroimd 

Station, 118 
Marlborough, Duke of 

(First), 40, 158 
Marlborough House, 41 
Marshalsea Prison, 116 
Mary, Queen of Scots, 144 
May, Sir Thomas Erskine, 

137 
Memorial Hall, 76 
Mendelssohn, 110 
Metsu, Gabriel, 169 
Middle Temple, hall of, 61, 

63 
Middle Temple Lane, 60 
Michael Angelo, 143, 173 
Mierevelt, 169 
Mildmay, Sir Walter, 87 
Mile End Road, 126 
Mill, James, 111 
Mill, John Stuart, 111 
Millais, 80, 166, 174 
Milton, 75, 88, 93, 96, 98, 104, 

105, 106, 107, 136, 137, 140, 

147 



[209] 



Mitre Court, 71 

Mitre Tavern, 71 

Monk, General, 136, 145 

Monmouth, Duke of, 121, 176 

Montague House, 132 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wort- 
ley, 53, 74 

Monument, The, 111 

Moore, Sir John, 131 

More's Garden, 8, 191 

More, Sir Thomas, 66, 118, 
121, 149, 192 

Moroni, 156 

Morris, William, 174 

Mulready, 166 

Murillo, 161, 168 

Museums 

British, 171, 173, 175 
Natural History, 182, 183 
United Service, 131 



Napier, monument of, 15, 80 

Naples, Aquarium, 164 

Napoleon, 56, 131 

Nell Gwynne, 16 

Nelson's Log of the Victory, 

68 
Nelson, Lord, monument of, 

14, 15, 80 
Newbury's house, 81 
Newcastle, Duke of, 70, 137 
Newcastle House, 70 
Newcome, Clive, 89 
Newcome, "Cod Colonel," 89 
New Record Office, 66 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 45, 138 
Nickleby, Nicholas, 177 
Norfolk, Duke of, 44, 54, 90, 

92 
Norman Era, 99 
North, Sir Edward, 90 
Northcliife, Lord, 75 



INDEX 



Northumberland, Duke of, 118 
Northumberland, Earl of, 90 

Offa, Mercian King, 147 

Old Bailey, 83 

Old Swan House Palace, 193 

Opera, Covent Garden, 25 

Opie, 177 

Orcagna, 154 

Outer Temple, 63 

Outram, Sir James, 139 

Ovid, 58 

Oxford, 60, 62 

Palaces 

Buckingham, 10, 128, 179 
Kensington, 179 
Marlborough House, 41 
St. James's, 10, 36, 41, 129 
Whitehall, 127, 128, 129, 
130, 131 

Pall Mall, 10, 36 

"Pall Mall Gazette," 137 

Palmerston, Lord, 55, 134, 
137 

"Pamela," 76 

Pan, Peter, 178 

Paris, compared with Lon- 
don, 6 

Park Lane, 54, 57 

Parks 

Battersea, 8, 193 
Green, 55, 179 
Hyde, 177, 178, 179, 180 
Regents', 181 

St. James's, 128, 177, 178, 
179, 181 

Parliament, 126, 134, 135, 147, 
148, 149, 178 

Paternosters, 82, 135 

Paterson, William, 109 

Peel, 132, 134 

Peers, 149 

[2 



Pembroke, Earl of, 63, 64, 65, 
141, 142 

Pendennis, Major, 169 

Penn, William, 117 

Pensioner's Court, 92 

Pepys, 20, 99, 103, 136 

Pepysian Library, 136 

Percy family, vault of, 143 

Peter the Cruel, 123 

Peter the Great, 118 

Philippa, Duchess of York, 
143 

Philippa, Queen, 146 

Phillips, William, 114, 163 

Piccadilly, 47, 178, 187 

Piccadilly Circus, 48 

Pickwick, Mr., 115 

"Pickwick Papers," 94 

Pillars of Hercules, 57 

Pimlico, 165 

Pinch, Ruth (and John West- 
lock), 63 

Piombo, Sebastiano del, 155, 
156 

Pitt, William, 7, 66, 137, 138, 
166 

Pitti Palace, 152 

Plantagenets, 125, 146 

Pocahontas, 84 

Poets' Corner, 138, 139, 140 

Pole, Geoffrey, 125 

Police magistrates of Lon- 
don, 29 

Ponsonby of Waterloo, monu- 
ment of, 80 

Pope, 105, 110, 194 

Poussin, Nicolas, 162 

Prince of Wales, 59 

Privy Council Buildings, 132 

Prudential Offices, 94 

Punch, 75 

Pye Corner, 85 

Pym, 173 
lo] 



INDEX 



Quakers' Meeting House, 196 
Quiney, Thomas, 78 

Rahere, 85, 87 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 101, 120, 

136, 137, 166 
Raleigh's prison, 125 
Rambler, The, birth of, 41 
Rambler Essays, 72 
Ramsay, 162, 189 
Raphael, 151, 152, 154, 155, 

158, 183 
"Rasselas," 72 

Record Office Museum, 67, 68 
Reformation, The, 82 
Regent's Park, 120 
Religious Tract Society, 81 
Rembrandt, 157, 159, 160, 168, 

169 
Reni, Guido, 154 
Restaurants, "Gourmet," 175; 

Italian, 176; "Rendezvous," 

175; Table d'Hote, 175 
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 80, 161, 

162, 169, 196 
Rhodes, Cecil, 164 
Richard, 123 

Richard II., 141, 142, 146 
Richard III., 121, 192 
Richardson, 173 
Richmond, 184 
Richmond, Countess of, 144, 

145 
Roberts, Lord, 15 
Robinson, Perdita, 169 
Rochford, Viscountess, 125 
Rodney, monument of, 80 
Rogers, Samuel, home of, 43 
Rolls Chapel, 67 
Rolls, Master of the, 67 
Rolls Yard, 67 
Rose Mount, 197 
Rossetti, 165, 166, 193 

[21 



Rossetti, Christian, 174 

Rothschild, Lord, 56, 187 

Rothschild, N. M. de, 108 

Rothschilds, business prem- 
ises, 108 

Roubiliac, 139 

Round Church, the, 65 

Roundheads, 136 

Royal Academy, 50 

Royal College of Surgeons, 
70 

Royal Exchange, 109, 110 

Royal Mint, 126 

Royal Residence, 124 

Royal United Service Mu- 
seum, 131 

Rubens, 157, 158 

Rupert, Prince, 144 

Ruskin, John, 156, 157, 174 

Ruysdael, 157 

St. Dunstan's Hill, 117 

St. Dunstan's-in-the-East, 117 

St. Edward, 146 

St. Edward's Staff, 122 

St. John, Knights of, 65, 93 

St. John's Gate, 93 

St. John's Wood, 186, 187, 
188, 189, 190, 195 

Sacheverell, Dr., 113 

Salisbury, Countess Mar- 
garet, 125 

"Sam's" (Coffee-house) Club, 
34 

Saracens, 65 

Sargent, John, 194 

Sarto, Andrea del, 154 

Savile Row, 52 

Savoy Chapel, 24 

Savoy Palace, 24 

Schools, 

Charterhouse, 89, 90, 91, 92, 
118, 175 

I] 



INDEX 



Schools — continued 

St. Paul's, 81 

Westminster, 148 
Scotch Lords, 118 
Scotland Yard, new, 133 
Scott, Captain, 131 
Scottish Lord Advocate, 133 
Sebert, Saxon King, 135, 141, 

142 
Selden, 60, 64 
Severn, 163 
Shaftesbury, Lord, 66 
Shakespeare, Edmund, 114 
Shakespeare, William, 60, 62, 

68, 78, 81, 98, 100, 113, 115, 

122, 130, 140, 147, 156, 163, 

164, 195 
Shaw, G. B., 12, 22, 23 
Shelley, 140, 188 
Shepherd's Market, 10 
Sheridan, 52, 55, 60, 140 
Shovel, Sir Cloudesley, 138 
Shrewsbury, Earl of, 143 
Siddons, Mrs., 162, 174 
Slgnorelli, Luca, 155 
Smith, Captain John, 84 
Smith, Sydney, 174 
Smith & Elder, publishers, 82 
Smithfield, 84, 86, 88, 93 
Smooth Field, 88 
Soane, Sir John, 109 
Soane's Museum, Sir John, 70 
Soho, 4, 175, 176 
Somerset House, 29, 158 
Southey, 69, 140, 148 
Southwark, 103, 115, 140 
Southwark Cathedral, 112, 

115, 117 
"Spectator, The," 74 
Spencer, Herbert, 140, 189, 

190, 196 
Squares 

Bedford, 173 

[2 



Squares — continued 

Bloomsbury, 173 

Brunswick, 173, 174 

Charterhouse, 89, 92, 93, 94 

Edwardes, 11 

Golden, 177 

Gough, 73 

Leicester, 49 

Lincoln's Inn Fields, 70 

Manchester, 168 

Mecklenburg, 173, 174 

New, 69 

Onslow, 8 

Printing House, 77 

Red Lion, 173, 174 

Russell, 173 

St. James's, 7, 44, 54 

Soho, 177 

Torrington, 174 

Trafalgar, 14, 128 

Woburn, 173, 174 
StaflFord House, 43, 160 
Stanley, Dean, 145 
Staple Inn, 69 
"State Apartments," 107 
Stationers' Hall, 81 
Steele, Richard, 21, 79, 90, 196 
Sterne, Lawrence, 53 
Stevenson, R. L., 56, 139 
Stone of Scone, 147 
Strafford, 149 
Strand, 16, 58, 187 
Strand Maypole, 33 
Stratford, 140 
Strauss, Oscar, 89 
Streets, 

Abbey Place, 189 

Abercorii Place, 189 

Adelaide Place, 117 

Albemarle, 53 

Aldersgate, 86, 105 

Arlington, 53 

Arundel (Strand), 33 

12] 



INDEX 



Streets — continued 



Streets — continued 



Ashley Place, 148 

Bartholomew, 109 

Beaufort, 191 

Bedford, 2T 

Berners, 177 

Bishopsgate, 110 

Bond, 52, 187 

Borough High, 115 

Bouverie, 19, 75 

Bow, 28, 29 

Bread, 98, 100, 101 

Brooke, 94 

Buckingham, 17 

Bunhill Row, 93 

Bury, 45 

Cannon, 108 

Carter Lane, 77 

Chancery Lane, 64, 66, 68, 

69, 70, 94 
Change Alley, 110 
Charterhouse, 88, 89 
Cheyne Row, 7, 192, 193 
Cheyne Walk, 191, 192, 193 
Church, 192 
Church Row, 197 
"The City," 95 
Clerkenwell Road, 93 
Clifton Road, 188 
Cock Lane, 84 
Cornhill, 109, 110 
Coventry, 48 
Craven, 7, 17 
Crown Office Row, 63 
Curzon, 10 
Dan vers, 192 
Dean, 175, 177 
Dover, 54 

Downing, 8, 132, 133 
Elm Tree Road, 187 
Essex (Strand), 33 
Farringdon, 76 
Fetter Lane, 73 

[213] 



Finchley Road, 187 

Flask Walk, 197 

Fleet, 9, 58, 60, 63, 66, 70, 

72, 73, 75 
Fore, 104 
Foster Lane, 97 
Friday, 100, 101 
Frith, 4, 177 
Gerrard, 4 
Giltspur, 84, 85, 93 
Gower, 173, 174 
Gracechurch, 111 
Gray's Inn Road, 94 
Great Ormond, 174 
Great Russell, 72 
Great St. Helen's, 110 
Great Tower, 117 
Greek, 177 
"Grub," 105, 172 
Guilford, 174 
Haymarket, 46 
Henrietta, 25 
High, 112, 116 
Horse Guards' Avenue, 132 
Hunter, 174 
Inner Temple Lane, 71 
Ivy Lane, 82 
Jermyn, 45 
Jewin Crescent, 105 
John (Adelphi Terrace), 

21, 197 
Kensington High, 195 
King, 25, 101 
King (St. James's Square), 

45 
King William, 108, 109 
King's Road, 193 
Kingsway, 31 
Knightsbridge, 57 
Ladbroke Grove, 195 
Leadenhall, 111 
Lime, 111 



INDEX 



Streets — continued 
Lisle, 175 

Little Britain, 86, 88, 105 
Lombard, 109, 110, HI 
Lothbury, 109 
Lower Thames, 117 
Marlborough Place, 189 
Mile End Road, 126 
Milton, 105 
Newgate, 82, 93 
Newman, 177 
Norfolk (Strand), 33 
North Bank, 190 
Northumberland Avenue, 15 
Pall Mall, 10, 33 
Park, 115 
Park Lane, 194 
Parliament, 127, 133, 134 
Paternoster Row, 81, 96 
Piccadilly, 47, 49, 57 
Plough Court, 110 
Princes, 109 
Pudding Lane, 85 
Queen Victoria, 77, 109 
Richmond Terrace, 132 
Royal Hospital Road, 194 
Russell (Covent Garden), 

26, 27 
St. Bride's Avenue, 75 
St. James's, 41 
St. James's Place, 43 
St. John's Lane, 93 
St. Swithin's Lane, 108 
Shaftesbury Avenue, 4 
Shire Lane, 74 
Sloane, 57 
Southampton, 25 
Strand, 16, 58 
Surrey (Strand), 33 
Theobald's Road, 174 
Thomas, 115 
Threadneedle, 109 



Streets — continued 

Tite, 194 

Tudor, 19, 75 

Victoria, 5, 148 

Walbrook, 108 

Waverley Place, 189 

Wellington, 29 

Westbourne Grove, 195 

Wardour, 176 

Warwick Lane, 82, 83 

Whitechapel Road, 119 

Whitehall, 127, 132, 134 

Wood, 97, 101 
Stuarts, 130, 184 
Surrey, Earl of, 118 
Sutton, Thomas, 91, 92 
Swift, 105, 192, 194 



Talbot, Edward, 142 
Talbot, Thomas, 125 
Taverns 

"Cock," The, 3 

Czar's Head, 101 

Mermaid, 100 

Mitre, 71 

Thatched House, 42 
Tate, Sir Henry, 165 
Templars, 60, 63, 64, 69, 141 
Temple, The, 9, 59, 60, 61, 62, 

65, 66, 68, 69, 75, 82, 141, 

185 
Temple Bar, 58, 59, 67, 87 
Temple of Diana, 79 
Teniers, David, 158 
Tennyson, 70, 139, 140, 166, 

190 
Tennvson's mother, 197 
Thackeray, 8, 60, 61, 62, 89, 

140, 163, 168, 173 
Thames, the, 8, 107 
Thames Embankment, 63 



[214] 



INDEX 



Theaters 

Drury Lane, 29 
Gaiety, 30 
Globe, 115 
Haymarket, 47 
Little, 21 
Lyceum, 29 
Tillotson, Bishop, 104 
Thurlow (lawyer), 63, 174 
Times, The, 75, 77 
Tintoretto, 155, 156 
Titian, 155, 156, 197 
Tonson, Jacob, 74 
Torrigiano, 143, 144, 145 
Tower Green, 125 
Tower of Babel, 119 
Tower of London, 107, 110, 
117, 118, 119, 121, 123, 124, 
125, 126, 129, 131, 146, 181 
Tower Hill, 117, 118 
Traitors' Gate, 121 
Traitor's Hill, 121 
Treasury, the, 132 
Trench, Archbishop, 138 
Trinity House, 126 
Tudor House, 194 
Tudor sovereigns, 184 
"Tully's Head," (Dodsley's 

shop), 40 
Turner, 26, 80, 161, 162, 164, 

165, 167, 191 
Tuscans, 158 
Twickenham, 184 
Tyburn, 84, 90 
Tyler, Wat, 88 
TyndaU, 189 

Uccello, Paolo, 153 
Umbrians, 158 

Valence, Aymer de, 65, 141 
Valence, Wm. de, 142 



Valois, Elizabeth de. Queen, 

147 
Van Dyck, 157, 158, 163, 169 
Velasquez, 160, 168, 169 
Venetians, 152, 155, 158, 170 
Verulam, 164; see Bacon 
Veronese, 155, 157 
Vertue, Robert (mason), 143 
Victoria Embankment, 15 
Victoria, Queen, 59, 179 
Victoria Tower, 134 
Villiers, Sir George and 

Lady, 143 
Voltaire, 196 



Wagner, 173 

Wakefield Tower, 120, 122 
Walker, Fred, 166, 167 
Wallace Collection, 160, 168, 

170 
Wallace, William, 88 
Waller, 136 

Walpole, Horace, 53, 126 
Walpole house, 194 
Walpole, Sir Robert, 133 
Walter, Sir, 90 
Waltham Abbey, 136 
Waltham Cross, 59 
Walton, Izaak, 71 
War Office, 132 
Wardrobe Tower, 124 
Washington, George, 68 
Warwick, Dowager Countess 

of. 111 
Warwick, Earls of, 83 
Waterloo, 127, 131 
Waterloo Bridge, 29 
Waterloo Place, 46 
Watteau, 70, 170 
Watts (artist), 80, 165, 167, 

168 
Well Walk, 196 

[215] 



INDEX 



Wellington, Duke of (con- 
queror of Napoleon), 56, 
80, 124, 131 
Wellington, Duke of (pres- 
ent), 57 
Wells, H. G., 13, 60, 197 
Wernher, Sir Julius, 55 
Wesley, John, 89, 138, 139 
Wesley's Mother, John, 93 
West, Banjamin, 177 
West End, 126 
West Kensington, 81 
Westminster Abbey, 58, 127, 
134, 135, 137, 141, 144, 145, 
148, 163, 185 
Westminster Hall, 149 
West Smithfield, 86 
Westlock, John (and Ruth 

Pinch), 62 
Whistler, 8, 165, 167, 191, 192, 

194 
Whitechapel, 126 
Whitehall Gardens, 132 
White Tower, the, 122, 123, 

124, 125 
Whittington, Dick, 85 
Wilberforce, William, 138 
William and Mary, 145 



William the Conqueror, 68, 

122 
Williams, Jane, 188 
Williams, Roger, 89 
Will's Coffee-house, 26 
Willson, Deckles, 188 
Wilson, 162 

Winchester, Bishop of, 113 
Wine Office Court, 73 
Wolfe, 124, 131 
Wolsey, 130 
Worde, Wynken de, 147 
Wordsworth, 97, 138, 139 
Wren, Sir Christopher, 75, 80, 

99, 108, 109, 111, 117, 123, 

148 
Wycherly, William, tomb of, 

26 

Yerkes, Charles T., 123 
York, Archbishops of, 130 
York, Duchess of, 142 
York, Elizabeth, Queen of, 

145 
York House, 18, 130 
York Watergate, 17 

Zangwill, 126 
Zurbaran, 161 



[216] 



NOV 19 1913 



■'"'^"fiimiliTMllil^ 

019 826 656 5 



